mirror of https://gitlab.com/bashrc2/epicyon
1856 lines
109 KiB
HTML
1856 lines
109 KiB
HTML
<h1 id="table-of-contents">Table of Contents</h1>
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<ol type="1">
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<li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
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<li><a href="#installation">Installation</a></li>
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<li><a href="#upgrading">Upgrading</a></li>
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<li><a href="#housekeeping">Housekeeping</a></li>
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<li><a href="#registering-accounts">Registering accounts</a></li>
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<li><a href="#the-importance-of-good-defaults">The importance of good
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defaults</a></li>
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<li><a href="#logging-in">Logging in</a></li>
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<li><a href="#account-profiles">Account Profiles</a></li>
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<li><a href="#following">Following</a></li>
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<li><a href="#creating-posts">Creating posts</a></li>
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<li><a href="#the-timeline">The Timeline</a></li>
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<li><a href="#calendar">Calendar</a></li>
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<li><a href="#side-columns">Side columns</a></li>
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<li><a href="#media-timeline">Media timeline</a></li>
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<li><a href="#moderation">Moderation</a></li>
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<li><a href="#themes">Themes</a></li>
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<li><a href="#buying-and-selling">Buying and selling</a></li>
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<li><a href="#sharing-economy">Sharing economy</a></li>
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<li><a href="#search">Search</a></li>
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<li><a href="#browsing-in-a-command-shell">Browsing in a command
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shell</a></li>
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<li><a href="#building-fediverse-communities">Building fediverse
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communities</a></li>
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<li><a href="#a-brief-history-of-the-fediverse">A Brief History of the
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Fediverse</a></li>
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</ol>
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<h1 id="introduction">Introduction</h1>
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<p><em>“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s
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end.”</em></p>
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<p>– Seneca</p>
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<p><em>The fediverse</em> is a set of federated servers, typically using
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a communication protocol called <a
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href="https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub">ActivityPub</a> which was
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devised by the <a href="https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg">social working
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group</a> within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). At present it is
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mostly used for <a
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href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging">microblogging</a>,
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although ActivityPub is sufficiently general that it can also be used
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for a variety of other purposes.</p>
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<p>The word <em>fediverse</em> (federated universe) appears to have
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originated around 2012 as the first <a
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href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identi.ca">identi.ca</a> website was
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ending and the <a
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href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump.io">pump.io</a> project was
|
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beginning. The ActivityPub protocol was initially called
|
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<em>ActivityPump</em>, due to the influence which pump.io had upon its
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creation. Fediverse servers are typically referred to as “instances”,
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but they are really just websites which can speak with each other using
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the vocabulary of ActivityPub. Choosing an instance is the same as
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choosing a website that you trust to handle your data. This is <em>the
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social web</em>.</p>
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<p>Servers such as <a
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href="https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon">Mastodon</a> are well known,
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but these are aimed at large scale deployments on powerful hardware
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running within data centers, making use of content distribution networks
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(CDN) and due to their large number of dependencies requiring someone
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with a high level of systems administration skill to maintain. Epicyon
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is designed for the opposite situation where it is only intended to have
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a single user or a small number of users (less than ten) running from
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your home location or on a modest VPS and where maintenance is extremely
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trivial such that it’s possible to keep an instance running for long
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durations with minimal intervention.</p>
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<p>Epicyon is part of the <a
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href="https://neustadt.fr/essays/the-small-web">small web</a> category
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of internet software, in that it is intended to scale via federation
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rather than to scale vertically via resource intensive and expensive
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hardware. Think many small communicating nodes rather than a small
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number of large servers. Also, in spite of the prevailing great
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obsession with scale, not everything needs to. You can federate with a
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small number of servers for a particular purpose - such as running a
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club or hackspace - and that’s ok. It supports both the server-to-server
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(S2S) and client-to-server (C2S) versions of the ActivityPub protocol,
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with <a
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href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Authentication">basic
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auth</a> for C2S authentication.</p>
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<p><a
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href="https://uxdesign.cc/mastodon-is-antiviral-design-42f090ab8d51?gi=9baf6195c60b">Anti-virality</a>
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is a common design approach in the fediverse, and Epicyon also follows
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this convention by having chronological timelines and avoiding lists of
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trending things or ranking profiles by numbers of followers. Recent
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hashtags are presented <em>in alphabetical order</em> to avoid any
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frequency bias. Typically if a post gets more than ten likes then its
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count will only show as <em>“10+”</em>, to try to avoid getting fixated
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upon making numbers go up at the expense of more considered forms of
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interaction.</p>
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<p>It is hardly possible to visit many sites on the web without your
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browser loading and running a large amount of javascript. Epicyon takes
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a minimalist approach where its web interface only uses <a
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href="https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage">HTML</a> and <a
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href="https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Overview.en.html">CSS</a>. You can
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disable javascript, or use a browser which doesn’t have javascript
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capability, and the user experience is unchanged. Lack of javascript
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also rules out a large area of potential attack surface.</p>
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<p>Another common concern is being able to keep instances running.
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Instance abandonment creates a lot of disruption, and it’s often related
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to the amount of effort that it takes to keep things going. To avoid the
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maintenance burden becoming prohibitive, Epicyon is implemented in a
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simple manner with very few dependencies and no database. All data is
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just files in a directory, and upgrades are also straightforward. This
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degree of simplicity runs counter to the current trend within the
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software industry towards complex frameworks and large scale databases
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with elaborate and rapidly evolving dependencies.</p>
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<p>Epicyon also includes some lightweight organizing features, such as
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calendar, events and sharing economy features.</p>
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<p>It’s time to make the web a social space once more, to reject
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centralized systems and prioritize people rather than business
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models.</p>
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<h1 id="installation">Installation</h1>
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<h2 id="prerequisites">Prerequisites</h2>
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<p>You will need python version 3.7 or later.</p>
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<p>On a Debian based system:</p>
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<div class="sourceCode" id="cb1"><pre
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class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb1-1"><a href="#cb1-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">sudo</span> apt install <span class="at">-y</span> tor python3-socks imagemagick python3-setuptools python3-cryptography python3-dateutil python3-idna python3-requests python3-flake8 python3-django-timezone-field python3-pyqrcode python3-png python3-bandit libimage-exiftool-perl certbot nginx wget</span></code></pre></div>
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<h2 id="source-code">Source code</h2>
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<p>The following instructions install Epicyon to the
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<strong>/opt</strong> directory. It’s not essential that it be installed
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there, and it could be in any other preferred directory.</p>
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<p>Clone the repo, or if you downloaded the tarball then extract it into
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the <strong>/opt</strong> directory.</p>
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<div class="sourceCode" id="cb2"><pre
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class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb2-1"><a href="#cb2-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="bu">cd</span> /opt</span>
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<span id="cb2-2"><a href="#cb2-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">git</span> clone <span class="at">--depth</span> 1 https://gitlab.com/bashrc2/epicyon</span></code></pre></div>
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<h2 id="set-permissions">Set permissions</h2>
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<p>Create a user for the server to run as:</p>
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<div class="sourceCode" id="cb3"><pre
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class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb3-1"><a href="#cb3-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">sudo</span> su</span>
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<span id="cb3-2"><a href="#cb3-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">adduser</span> <span class="at">--system</span> <span class="at">--home</span><span class="op">=</span>/opt/epicyon <span class="at">--group</span> epicyon</span>
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<span id="cb3-3"><a href="#cb3-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">chown</span> <span class="at">-R</span> epicyon:epicyon /opt/epicyon</span></code></pre></div>
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<h2 id="news-mirrors">News mirrors</h2>
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<p>The content for RSS feed links can be downloaded and mirrored, so
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that even if the original sources go offline the content remains
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readable. Link the RSS/newswire mirrors with.</p>
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<div class="sourceCode" id="cb4"><pre
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class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb4-1"><a href="#cb4-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">mkdir</span> /var/www/YOUR_DOMAIN</span>
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<span id="cb4-2"><a href="#cb4-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">mkdir</span> <span class="at">-p</span> /opt/epicyon/accounts/newsmirror</span>
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<span id="cb4-3"><a href="#cb4-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">ln</span> <span class="at">-s</span> /opt/epicyon/accounts/newsmirror /var/www/YOUR_DOMAIN/newsmirror</span></code></pre></div>
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<h2 id="create-daemon">Create daemon</h2>
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<p>Typically the server will run from a <em>systemd</em> daemon. It can
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be set up as follows:</p>
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<div class="sourceCode" id="cb5"><pre
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class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb5-1"><a href="#cb5-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">nano</span> /etc/systemd/system/epicyon.service</span></code></pre></div>
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<p>Paste the following:</p>
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<div class="sourceCode" id="cb6"><pre
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class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb6-1"><a href="#cb6-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">[Unit]</span></span>
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<span id="cb6-2"><a href="#cb6-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">Description</span><span class="op">=</span>epicyon</span>
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<span id="cb6-3"><a href="#cb6-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">After</span><span class="op">=</span>syslog.target</span>
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<span id="cb6-4"><a href="#cb6-4" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">After</span><span class="op">=</span>network.target</span>
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<span id="cb6-5"><a href="#cb6-5" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
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<span id="cb6-6"><a href="#cb6-6" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">[Service]</span></span>
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<span id="cb6-7"><a href="#cb6-7" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">Type</span><span class="op">=</span>simple</span>
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<span id="cb6-8"><a href="#cb6-8" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">User</span><span class="op">=</span>epicyon</span>
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<span id="cb6-9"><a href="#cb6-9" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">Group</span><span class="op">=</span>epicyon</span>
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<span id="cb6-10"><a href="#cb6-10" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">WorkingDirectory</span><span class="op">=</span>/opt/epicyon</span>
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<span id="cb6-11"><a href="#cb6-11" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ExecStart</span><span class="op">=</span>/usr/bin/python3 <span class="ex">/opt/epicyon/epicyon.py</span> <span class="at">--port</span> 443 <span class="at">--proxy</span> 7156 <span class="at">--domain</span> YOUR_DOMAIN <span class="at">--registration</span> open <span class="at">--log_login_failures</span></span>
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<span id="cb6-12"><a href="#cb6-12" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">Environment</span><span class="op">=</span>USER=epicyon</span>
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<span id="cb6-13"><a href="#cb6-13" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">Environment</span><span class="op">=</span>PYTHONUNBUFFERED=true</span>
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<span id="cb6-14"><a href="#cb6-14" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">Environment</span><span class="op">=</span>PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8</span>
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<span id="cb6-15"><a href="#cb6-15" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">Restart</span><span class="op">=</span>always</span>
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<span id="cb6-16"><a href="#cb6-16" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">StandardError</span><span class="op">=</span>syslog</span>
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<span id="cb6-17"><a href="#cb6-17" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">CPUQuota</span><span class="op">=</span>80%</span>
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<span id="cb6-18"><a href="#cb6-18" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProtectHome</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-19"><a href="#cb6-19" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProtectKernelTunables</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-20"><a href="#cb6-20" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProtectKernelModules</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-21"><a href="#cb6-21" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProtectControlGroups</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-22"><a href="#cb6-22" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProtectKernelLogs</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-23"><a href="#cb6-23" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProtectHostname</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-24"><a href="#cb6-24" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProtectClock</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-25"><a href="#cb6-25" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProtectProc</span><span class="op">=</span>invisible</span>
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<span id="cb6-26"><a href="#cb6-26" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">ProcSubset</span><span class="op">=</span>pid</span>
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<span id="cb6-27"><a href="#cb6-27" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">PrivateTmp</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-28"><a href="#cb6-28" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">PrivateUsers</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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||
<span id="cb6-29"><a href="#cb6-29" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">PrivateDevices</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-30"><a href="#cb6-30" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">PrivateIPC</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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||
<span id="cb6-31"><a href="#cb6-31" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">MemoryDenyWriteExecute</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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||
<span id="cb6-32"><a href="#cb6-32" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">NoNewPrivileges</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-33"><a href="#cb6-33" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">LockPersonality</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-34"><a href="#cb6-34" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">RestrictRealtime</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-35"><a href="#cb6-35" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">RestrictSUIDSGID</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-36"><a href="#cb6-36" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">RestrictNamespaces</span><span class="op">=</span>true</span>
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<span id="cb6-37"><a href="#cb6-37" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">SystemCallArchitectures</span><span class="op">=</span>native</span>
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<span id="cb6-38"><a href="#cb6-38" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a></span>
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<span id="cb6-39"><a href="#cb6-39" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">[Install]</span></span>
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<span id="cb6-40"><a href="#cb6-40" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="va">WantedBy</span><span class="op">=</span>multi-user.target</span></code></pre></div>
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<p>Activate the daemon:</p>
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<div class="sourceCode" id="cb7"><pre
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class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb7-1"><a href="#cb7-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">systemctl</span> enable epicyon</span>
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<span id="cb7-2"><a href="#cb7-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">systemctl</span> start epicyon</span></code></pre></div>
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<h2 id="web-server-setup">Web server setup</h2>
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<p>Create a web server configuration.</p>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb8"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb8-1"><a href="#cb8-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">nano</span> /etc/nginx/sites-available/YOUR_DOMAIN</span></code></pre></div>
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<p>And paste the following:</p>
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<pre class="nginx"><code>server {
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listen 80;
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listen [::]:80;
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server_name YOUR_DOMAIN;
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access_log /dev/null;
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error_log /dev/null;
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||
client_max_body_size 31m;
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client_body_buffer_size 128k;
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||
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||
limit_conn conn_limit_per_ip 10;
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||
limit_req zone=req_limit_per_ip burst=10 nodelay;
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||
|
||
index index.html;
|
||
rewrite ^ https://$server_name$request_uri? permanent;
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
server {
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||
listen 443 ssl http2;
|
||
server_name YOUR_DOMAIN;
|
||
|
||
gzip on;
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||
gzip_disable "msie6";
|
||
gzip_vary on;
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||
gzip_proxied any;
|
||
gzip_min_length 1024;
|
||
gzip_comp_level 6;
|
||
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
|
||
gzip_http_version 1.1;
|
||
gzip_types text/plain text/css text/vcard text/vcard+xml application/json application/ld+json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/rdf+xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
|
||
|
||
ssl_stapling off;
|
||
ssl_stapling_verify off;
|
||
ssl on;
|
||
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/YOUR_DOMAIN/fullchain.pem;
|
||
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/YOUR_DOMAIN/privkey.pem;
|
||
#ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/YOUR_DOMAIN.dhparam;
|
||
|
||
ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
|
||
ssl_ciphers HIGH:!MEDIUM:!LOW:!aNULL:!NULL:!SHA;
|
||
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
|
||
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
|
||
ssl_session_tickets off;
|
||
|
||
add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src https:; script-src https: 'unsafe-inline'; style-src https: 'unsafe-inline'";
|
||
add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
|
||
add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
|
||
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
|
||
add_header X-Download-Options noopen;
|
||
add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies none;
|
||
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubDomains; preload" always;
|
||
|
||
access_log /dev/null;
|
||
error_log /dev/null;
|
||
|
||
index index.html;
|
||
|
||
location /newsmirror {
|
||
root /var/www/YOUR_DOMAIN;
|
||
try_files $uri =404;
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
keepalive_timeout 70;
|
||
sendfile on;
|
||
|
||
location / {
|
||
proxy_http_version 1.1;
|
||
client_max_body_size 31M;
|
||
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
|
||
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
|
||
proxy_set_header X-Forward-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
|
||
proxy_set_header X-Forward-Proto http;
|
||
proxy_set_header X-Nginx-Proxy true;
|
||
proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
|
||
proxy_connect_timeout 10080s;
|
||
proxy_send_timeout 10080;
|
||
proxy_read_timeout 10080;
|
||
proxy_buffer_size 64k;
|
||
proxy_buffers 16 32k;
|
||
proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
|
||
proxy_redirect off;
|
||
proxy_request_buffering off;
|
||
proxy_buffering off;
|
||
proxy_pass http://localhost:7156;
|
||
tcp_nodelay on;
|
||
}
|
||
}</code></pre>
|
||
<p>Enable the site:</p>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb10"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb10-1"><a href="#cb10-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">ln</span> <span class="at">-s</span> /etc/nginx/sites-available/YOUR_DOMAIN /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/</span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<h2 id="on-your-internet-router">On your internet router</h2>
|
||
<p>Forward port 443 from your internet router to your server. If you
|
||
have dynamic DNS make sure its configured.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="obtain-a-tls-certificate">Obtain a TLS certificate</h2>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb11"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb11-1"><a href="#cb11-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">systemctl</span> stop nginx</span>
|
||
<span id="cb11-2"><a href="#cb11-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">certbot</span> certonly <span class="at">-n</span> <span class="at">--server</span> https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory <span class="at">--standalone</span> <span class="at">-d</span> YOUR_DOMAIN <span class="at">--renew-by-default</span> <span class="at">--agree-tos</span> <span class="at">--email</span> YOUR_EMAIL</span>
|
||
<span id="cb11-3"><a href="#cb11-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">systemctl</span> start nginx</span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<h2 id="restart-the-web-server">Restart the web server</h2>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb12"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb12-1"><a href="#cb12-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">systemctl</span> restart nginx</span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<p>If you need to use <a href="https://www.fail2ban.org">fail2ban</a>
|
||
then failed login attempts can be found in
|
||
<strong>accounts/loginfailures.log</strong>.</p>
|
||
<p>If you are using the <a href="https://caddyserver.com">Caddy web
|
||
server</a> then see <a
|
||
href="https://code.libreserver.org/bashrc/epicyon/raw/main/caddy.example.conf">caddy.example.conf</a>.</p>
|
||
<p>Now you can navigate to your domain and register an account. The
|
||
first account becomes the administrator.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="configuring-notifications">Configuring notifications</h2>
|
||
<p>Since Epicyon does not use javascript there are no notifications in
|
||
the browser. However, you can receive notifications via email, XMPP, <a
|
||
href="https://matrix.org">Matrix</a> or <a
|
||
href="https://ntfy.sh">ntfy</a>.</p>
|
||
<p>Copy the notifications script:</p>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb13"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb13-1"><a href="#cb13-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">cp</span> /opt/epicyon/scripts/epicyon-notification /usr/local/bin/epicyon-notification</span>
|
||
<span id="cb13-2"><a href="#cb13-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">chmod</span> +x /usr/local/bin/epicyon-notification</span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<p>If you are using email for notifications and it is a single user
|
||
instance then you might want to edit <em>MY_EMAIL_ADDRESS</em> within
|
||
<em>/usr/local/bin/epicyon-notification</em>.</p>
|
||
<p>Then add the following to <em>/etc/crontab</em>.</p>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb14"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb14-1"><a href="#cb14-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="co"># */1 * * * * root /usr/local/bin/epicyon-notification</span></span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<h2 id="installing-on-onion-or-i2p-domains">Installing on Onion or i2p
|
||
domains</h2>
|
||
<p>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 <em>deploy</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="upgrading">Upgrading</h1>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb15"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb15-1"><a href="#cb15-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="bu">cd</span> /opt/epicyon</span>
|
||
<span id="cb15-2"><a href="#cb15-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">git</span> pull</span>
|
||
<span id="cb15-3"><a href="#cb15-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="fu">chown</span> <span class="at">-R</span> epicyon:epicyon <span class="pp">*</span></span>
|
||
<span id="cb15-4"><a href="#cb15-4" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">systemctl</span> restart epicyon</span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<h1 id="housekeeping">Housekeeping</h1>
|
||
<p>To avoid running out of disk space you will want to clear down old
|
||
inbox posts. Posts from your instance outboxes will be unaffected.</p>
|
||
<p>Create an archive script
|
||
<strong>/usr/bin/epicyon-archive</strong>:</p>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb16"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb16-1"><a href="#cb16-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="co">#!/bin/bash</span></span>
|
||
<span id="cb16-2"><a href="#cb16-2" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="bu">cd</span> /opt/epicyon <span class="kw">||</span> <span class="bu">exit</span> 0</span>
|
||
<span id="cb16-3"><a href="#cb16-3" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="ex">/usr/bin/python3</span> epicyon.py <span class="at">--archive</span> none <span class="at">--archiveweeks</span> 4 <span class="at">--maxposts</span> 32000</span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<p>You can adjust the maximum number of weeks and the maximum number of
|
||
inbox posts as needed. Then add it as a cron entry.</p>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb17"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span id="cb17-1"><a href="#cb17-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="bu">echo</span> <span class="st">"*/60 * * * * root /usr/bin/epicyon-archive"</span> <span class="op">>></span> /etc/crontab</span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<h1 id="registering-accounts">Registering accounts</h1>
|
||
<p>You will notice that within the systemd daemon the
|
||
<em>registration</em> option is set to <em>open</em>. In a browser if
|
||
you navigate to the URL of your instance then you should see a
|
||
<em>Register</em> button. The first account to register becomes the
|
||
administrator.</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="the-importance-of-good-defaults">The importance of good
|
||
defaults</h1>
|
||
<p>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 <em>addiction patterns</em>
|
||
and <em>involuntary oversharing</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<p>Good defaults tend to be a little more private and avoid the
|
||
addiction to making numbers go up or achieving <em>notoriety at any
|
||
social cost</em>. 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.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="logging-in">Logging in</h1>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-login.png" alt="Login screen" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Login screen</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h1 id="account-profiles">Account Profiles</h1>
|
||
<h2 id="initial-setup">Initial setup</h2>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p><img src="manual-profile.jpg" alt="Profile screen" /> <img
|
||
src="manual-edit-button.png" alt="Profile edit button" /></p>
|
||
<h2 id="basic-details">Basic details</h2>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-basic-details.png" alt="Profile basic details" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Profile basic details</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3 id="describe-yourself">Describe yourself</h3>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="premium-account">Premium Account</h3>
|
||
<p>There is an option to set your account as “premium”. This is intended
|
||
for an <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyFans">OnlyFans</a>-like
|
||
situation in which followers need to subscribe with some payment before
|
||
making a follow request to receive your posts. If this option is
|
||
selected then recent posts on your profile won’t be shown to
|
||
unauthorized viewers and the terminology of donations is switched to
|
||
subscriptions. You will need to set a link where followers can register,
|
||
and ask fans to specify their fediverse handle so that you can approve
|
||
it.</p>
|
||
<p>A difference with corporate content subscription services is that the
|
||
federated nature of instances means that once a post has been sent out
|
||
to fans/followers then you won’t have any control over what they
|
||
subsequently do with your content. So they could boost/announce posts to
|
||
non-subscribers, for example.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="other-fediverse-accounts">Other fediverse accounts</h3>
|
||
<p>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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-1">two
|
||
letter abbreviations</a>. This helps to avoid having posts from other
|
||
people within your timeline which you can’t read.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="expiring-posts">Expiring posts</h3>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="quitting-the-website-formerly-known-as-twitter">Quitting the
|
||
website formerly known as Twitter</h3>
|
||
<p>If you are coming to the fediverse as an exile from the website
|
||
formerly known as 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.</p>
|
||
<p>As Twitter turns into an information black hole it’s expected that
|
||
posts on that site may become no longer visible on the open web.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="alternative-contact-details">Alternative contact details</h3>
|
||
<p>You can set additional contact details, such as email, XMPP and
|
||
Matrix addresses. So if people want to contact you for private <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_encryption">end-to-end
|
||
secure</a> 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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="filtering-and-blocking">Filtering and blocking</h3>
|
||
<p>If you want to block particular fediverse accounts or instances then
|
||
you can enter those in the <em>blocked account</em> section. There
|
||
should be one account per line.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="geolocation-spoofing">Geolocation spoofing</h3>
|
||
<p>Within the <em>filtering and blocking</em> 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 <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias">confirmation
|
||
bias</a> effect where the surveillance systems become increasingly
|
||
confident in an erroneous conclusion. Setting a city somewhere near to
|
||
your <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone">time zone</a> is
|
||
preferable, so that it matches your typical pattern of daily posting
|
||
activity without giving away your real location.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="verifying-your-website-or-blog">Verifying your website or
|
||
blog</h3>
|
||
<p>It is possible to indicate that a website or blog belongs to you by
|
||
linking it to your profile screen. Within the <em>head</em> html section
|
||
of your website or blog index page include a line similar to:</p>
|
||
<div class="sourceCode" id="cb18"><pre
|
||
class="sourceCode html"><code class="sourceCode html"><span id="cb18-1"><a href="#cb18-1" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1"></a><span class="dt"><</span><span class="kw">link</span> <span class="er">rel</span><span class="ot">=</span><span class="st">"me"</span> <span class="er">href</span><span class="ot">=</span><span class="st">"https://YourEpicyonDomain/@YourNickname"</span> <span class="dt">/></span></span></code></pre></div>
|
||
<p>If you edit and then publish your profile, with the <em>website</em>
|
||
and/or <em>blog</em> fields completed then if the above link is found
|
||
your sites will be indicated to be verified on your profile screen. When
|
||
verified they will appear in green with a tick.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-verified-website.jpg"
|
||
alt="Profile screen showing verified website" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Profile screen showing verified
|
||
website</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h2 id="roles">Roles</h2>
|
||
<p>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:</p>
|
||
<h3 id="moderator">Moderator</h3>
|
||
<p>Is allowed to remove posts and deal with moderation reports.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="editor">Editor</h3>
|
||
<p>Editors can change the links in the left column and the RSS feeds
|
||
within the right newswire column.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="artist">Artist</h3>
|
||
<p>Artists can change the colors and style of the web interface, using
|
||
the <em>theme designer</em>.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="counselor">Counselor</h3>
|
||
<p>A <em>counselor</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="devop">Devop</h3>
|
||
<p>Devops are permitted to perform some routine administration
|
||
functions, such as monitoring instance performance graphs.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="following">Following</h1>
|
||
<p><em>“I am not a beginning. I am not an end. I am a link in a
|
||
chain.”</em></p>
|
||
<p>– Keith Haring</p>
|
||
<p>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 (<span
|
||
class="citation" data-cites="name">@name</span><span class="citation"
|
||
data-cites="domain">@domain</span>) or URL of the profile page for the
|
||
person that you want to follow and select <em>search</em>. If the
|
||
account is found then its details will appear and you can choose to
|
||
follow or not.</p>
|
||
<p><img src="manual-search-following.jpg"
|
||
alt="Following people via search" /> <img src="manual-following.jpg"
|
||
alt="Following search result" /></p>
|
||
<p>Once you are following someone then selecting their profile picture
|
||
and then the <em>unfollow</em> button will remove the follow.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="creating-posts">Creating posts</h1>
|
||
<p>To make a new post from the main timeline screen select the <em>new
|
||
post</em> icon at the top right of the centre column.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-new-post.png" alt="New post screen" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">New post screen</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>The format of the post should be plain text, without any html markup.
|
||
Any URLs will be automatically linked, and you can use hashtags and
|
||
emoji. Emojis can be added via their name with colon characters before
|
||
and after.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="post-scopes">Post scopes</h2>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="public">Public</h3>
|
||
<p>Is visible to anyone in the fediverse. May also be visible outside of
|
||
the fediverse to anyone with an appropriate link.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="blog">Blog</h3>
|
||
<p>Used to create a blog post. Blog posts are typically longer than
|
||
other types of post, and are also publicly visible to anyone on the
|
||
web.</p>
|
||
<p>At the top of the <em>links</em> column on the main timeline screen
|
||
there is an icon to show an RSS feed for your blog entries.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="unlisted">Unlisted</h3>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="followers">Followers</h3>
|
||
<p>A <em>followers only</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="dm">DM</h3>
|
||
<p>Direct messages are only send to specific people, designated by their
|
||
fediverse handles (<span class="citation"
|
||
data-cites="name">@name</span><span class="citation"
|
||
data-cites="domain">@domain</span>).</p>
|
||
<h3 id="reminder">Reminder</h3>
|
||
<p>A reminder is a direct message to yourself at some time in the
|
||
future. It will appear on your calendar.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="report">Report</h3>
|
||
<p>A report is a type of post which is sent to moderators on your
|
||
instance, to alert them about some problem. It is not sent to any other
|
||
instance.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="shares">Shares</h3>
|
||
<p>A <em>shared item</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="wanted">Wanted</h3>
|
||
<p>A <em>wanted item</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="subject-or-content-warning">Subject or Content Warning</h2>
|
||
<p>Content warnings are not “censorship” or “hiding important things”.
|
||
It’s like the subject line of an email: the reader knows what’s coming
|
||
so they may choose when to see it. In a timeline which is strictly
|
||
chronological, content warnings can also help you to skip over posts
|
||
which obviously are not going to be of interest to you, rather than
|
||
depending on a fallible or gameable algorithm to select what is
|
||
relevant.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="attachments">Attachments</h2>
|
||
<p>Attachments can use a variety of formats.</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Images: <em>jpg, jpeg, gif, webp, avif, svg, ico, jxl, png</em></li>
|
||
<li>Audio: <em>mp3, ogg, flac, opus, speex, wav</em></li>
|
||
<li>Video: <em>mp4, webm, ogv</em></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-attachments.png" alt="New post attachments" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">New post attachments</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-watermark-ai.png" alt="Image watermarking" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Image watermarking</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>When attaching an image it is possible to overlay a watermark image
|
||
in order to mess with generative AI scrapers trying to grift upon your
|
||
photos. Epicyon will do it’s best to bounce AI scraper bots, but since
|
||
those systems are fundamentally unethical they cannot be relied upon to
|
||
follow user agent conventions. A watermark image can be uploaded from
|
||
the <strong>Edit Profile</strong> screen under the <strong>Background
|
||
Images</strong> section. You may need to experiment with the watermark
|
||
image width, position and opacity, which can be set as command options
|
||
on the daemon. See <a
|
||
href="https://gitlab.com/bashrc2/epicyon/-/blob/main/README_commandline.md">README_commandline.md</a>
|
||
for details.</p>
|
||
<p>Even if the scraper bot tries to remove your watermark from the image
|
||
by filling in from the surrounding pixels, the removal itself may leave
|
||
a detectable trace indicative of improper use.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="events">Events</h2>
|
||
<p>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. <img src="manual-date-time.png"
|
||
alt="New post event" /></p>
|
||
<h2 id="maps">Maps</h2>
|
||
<p>The location field on a post can be a description, but it can also be
|
||
a map geolocation. To add a geolocation go to <a
|
||
href="https://www.openstreetmap.org">openstreetmap.org</a>, find your
|
||
location and copy and paste the URL into the location field of your new
|
||
post.</p>
|
||
<p>Selecting the <em>location</em> header will open the last known
|
||
geolocation, so if your current location is near this makes it quicker
|
||
to find.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="scientific-references">Scientific references</h2>
|
||
<p>It is possible to have references to scientific papers linked
|
||
automatically, such that they are readable with one click/press.
|
||
Supported references are <a href="https://arxiv.org">arXiv</a> and <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier">Digital
|
||
object identifier (DOI)</a>. For example:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>This is a reference to a paper: arxiv:2203.15752</code></pre>
|
||
<h1 id="the-timeline">The Timeline</h1>
|
||
<h2 id="layout">Layout</h2>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-layout.png" alt="Layout" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Layout</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p>At the top right of the centre column there are a few icons known as
|
||
<em>action buttons</em>, for show/hide extra timelines, show/hide
|
||
announces or boosts, calendar, search and creating a new post.</p>
|
||
<p>On mobile screens there is a single column layout, and the
|
||
<em>links</em> and <em>newswire</em> column content is available via
|
||
action buttons.</p>
|
||
<p>Different timelines are listed at the top - inbox, DM, replies,
|
||
outbox, etc - and more can be shown by selecting the <em>show/hide</em>
|
||
icon.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="navigation">Navigation</h2>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p>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 <strong>ALT+SHIFT+></strong> and
|
||
<strong>ALT+SHIFT+<</strong>. Key shortcuts exist for most navigation
|
||
events, and you can customise them by selecting the <em>key
|
||
shortcuts</em> link at the bottom of the left column.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-shortcuts.png" alt="Keyboard shortcuts screen" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Keyboard shortcuts screen</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h1 id="calendar">Calendar</h1>
|
||
<p><em>“There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive
|
||
moment”</em></p>
|
||
<p>– Henri Cartier-Bresson</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p>Calendar events are really just ordinary posts with a date, time and
|
||
perhaps also a location attached to them. Posts with <em>Public</em>
|
||
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.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-calendar.png" alt="Calendar screen" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Calendar screen</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p><em>Reminder</em> is a special type of calendar post, which is really
|
||
just a direct message to yourself in the future.</p>
|
||
<p>To create a calendar post from the main timeline, select the
|
||
<strong>New post</strong> 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 <a
|
||
href="https://openstreetmap.org">openstreetmap</a>.</p>
|
||
<p>Selecting the calendar icon from the main timeline will display your
|
||
calendar events. It is possible to export them using the
|
||
<strong>iCalendar</strong> icon at the bottom right to the screen.
|
||
Calendar events are also available via <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalDAV">CalDav</a> using the URL
|
||
https://yourdomain/calendars/yournickname</p>
|
||
<h1 id="side-columns">Side columns</h1>
|
||
<p><img src="manual-side-columns.png" alt="Timeline side columns" /> The
|
||
links within the side columns are global to the instance, and only users
|
||
having the <em>editor</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<p>This multi-column layout is inspired by the appearance of early blogs
|
||
or the original <em>Indymedia</em>, which in turn was inspired by the
|
||
appearance of monastic texts in which you would see comments in the
|
||
margins in line with the main text. So you can be reading posts from
|
||
friends but also keeping an eye on the news from RSS/Atom feeds at the
|
||
same time.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="links">Links</h2>
|
||
<p>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 <em>editor</em> 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:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>* Search
|
||
|
||
Code search https://beta.sayhello.so
|
||
Wiby https://wiby.me/
|
||
|
||
* Links
|
||
|
||
16colors https://16colo.rs
|
||
Dotshareit http://dotshare.it</code></pre>
|
||
<h2 id="newswire">Newswire</h2>
|
||
<p>The right column is the newswire column. It contains a list of links
|
||
generated from RSS/Atom feeds.</p>
|
||
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS">RSS</a> is a much
|
||
maligned protocol. It’s simple, and an excellent way to read news in a
|
||
manner that’s convenient for you. The main reason for its downfall is
|
||
that it’s difficult to implement <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism">targeted
|
||
advertising</a> - the dominant business model of the web - within RSS.
|
||
It’s hard to spy on anyone using an RSS feed. So if we want the web to
|
||
improve then supporting RSS ought to be a priority.</p>
|
||
<p>If you have the <em>editor</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="moderated-feeds">Moderated feeds</h3>
|
||
<p>Feeds can be either <em>moderated</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="mirrored-feeds">Mirrored feeds</h3>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="filters-and-warnings">Filters and warnings</h3>
|
||
<p>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:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>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</code></pre>
|
||
<h3 id="newswire-tagging-rules">Newswire tagging rules</h3>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p>On the newswire edit screen, available to accounts having the
|
||
<em>moderator</em> role, you can define the news processing rules. There
|
||
is one rule per line.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Syntax:</strong> <em>if [conditions] then [action]</em></p>
|
||
<p><strong>Logical Operators:</strong> <em>not, and, or, xor, from,
|
||
contains</em></p>
|
||
<p>A simple example is:</p>
|
||
<pre class="test"><code>if moderated and not #oxfordimc then block</code></pre>
|
||
<p>For moderated feeds this will only allow items through if they have
|
||
the <strong>#oxfordimc</strong> hashtag.</p>
|
||
<p>If you want to add hashtags an example is:</p>
|
||
<pre class="test"><code>if contains "garden" or contains "lawn" then add #gardening</code></pre>
|
||
<p>So if incoming news contains the word “garden” either in its title or
|
||
description then it will automatically be assigned the hashtag
|
||
<strong>#gardening</strong>. You can also add hashtags based upon other
|
||
hashtags.</p>
|
||
<pre class="test"><code>if #garden or #lawn then add #gardening</code></pre>
|
||
<p>You can also remove hashtags.</p>
|
||
<pre class="test"><code>if #garden or #lawn then remove #gardening</code></pre>
|
||
<p>Which will remove <strong>#gardening</strong> if it exists as a
|
||
hashtag within the news post.</p>
|
||
<p>You can add tags based upon the RSS link, such as:</p>
|
||
<pre class="test"><code>if from "mycatsite.com" then add #cats</code></pre>
|
||
<h1 id="media-timeline">Media timeline</h1>
|
||
<p>Selecting the <em>show/hide</em> icon from the main timeline will
|
||
reveal an extra timeline called <strong>Media</strong>. The media
|
||
timeline shows posts which contain a picture, audio or video content. So
|
||
if you are primarily interested in photos then this timeline can be
|
||
useful.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-media.jpg" alt="Media timeline" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Media timeline</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>If there is an description for the media then this also appears
|
||
within this timeline. Selecting a photo will enlarge it.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="moderation">Moderation</h1>
|
||
<p>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:</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Founders initiate the forum</li>
|
||
<li>The forum gains popularity and a community grows around it</li>
|
||
<li>Trolls show up</li>
|
||
<li>The administrator is too nice, believes that all opinions are
|
||
equally valid, and refuses to remove trolls or promptly redact their
|
||
content</li>
|
||
<li>Within somewhere between a couple of days and a few weeks, trolls
|
||
set longstanding forum members against each other</li>
|
||
<li>Community fails and the forum closes abruptly, leaving only a
|
||
404</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="moderator-timeline">Moderator timeline</h2>
|
||
<p>If you have the <em>moderator</em> role then selecting the
|
||
<em>show/hide</em> icon from the main timeline will reveal an extra
|
||
timeline usually called <strong>Mod</strong>. Selecting this timeline
|
||
will take you to the instance moderator timeline, which contains any
|
||
moderation reports.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-moderator.png" alt="Moderator timeline" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Moderator timeline</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3 id="filtering">Filtering</h3>
|
||
<p>You can filter out posts containing particular words or phrases by
|
||
entering the offending text and then selecting the
|
||
<strong>Filter</strong> button. You can use the
|
||
<strong>Unfilter</strong> button to reverse the decision.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="removing-an-offending-post">Removing an offending post</h3>
|
||
<p>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 <strong>Remove</strong> button.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="suspending-an-account">Suspending an account</h3>
|
||
<p>You can suspend an account on the instance by entering the nickname
|
||
and then selecting the <strong>Suspend</strong> button. Accounts are
|
||
usually suspended pending investigation into some terms of service
|
||
violation. You can use the <strong>Unsuspend</strong> button to
|
||
re-enable an account.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="instance-level-blocking-of-handles-or-domains">Instance level
|
||
blocking of handles or domains</h3>
|
||
<p>To block a fediverse handle (nickname@domain), hashtag or domain
|
||
enter the thing that you wish to block and then select the
|
||
<strong>Block</strong> button. You can do the same with the
|
||
<strong>Unblock</strong> button to reverse your decision.</p>
|
||
<p>When creating a block you can also add a space followed by any text
|
||
describing the reason for the block. Such as:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>annoyingdomain.com A spam instance</code></pre>
|
||
<p>If you want to see what is being blocked at the instance level then
|
||
select the <strong>Info</strong> button.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="web-crawlers-and-search-bots">Web crawlers and search bots</h3>
|
||
<p>Most fediverse posts have <em>Public</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<p>If you are the administrator of the instance then to see the
|
||
currently active web search crawlers edit your profile and select
|
||
<strong>Filtering and blocking</strong>, then <strong>Known Web Search
|
||
Bots</strong>. The most common ones will appear at the top. To enable
|
||
particular ones add their name to <strong>Web Search Bots
|
||
Allowed</strong> (one per line).</p>
|
||
<h3 id="clearing-the-actor-cache">Clearing the Actor Cache</h3>
|
||
<p>If you know that an instance has had a security incident and has
|
||
rotated their signing keys then you can clear the cache for that
|
||
instance so that their public keys will be refreshed. Enter the domain
|
||
name for the instance and then select <strong>Clear Cache</strong>
|
||
button.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="account-level-moderation">Account level moderation</h2>
|
||
<h3 id="filtering-1">Filtering</h3>
|
||
<p>From the main timeline select the top banner to go to your profile,
|
||
then select the <strong>edit</strong> icon. Open the <strong>Filtering
|
||
and blocking</strong> section and then you can specify filtered words or
|
||
phrases. Be sure to select <strong>Publish</strong> to finalize your
|
||
settings.</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="blocking-accounts-or-domains">Blocking accounts or domains</h3>
|
||
<p>From the main timeline select the top banner to go to your profile,
|
||
then select the <strong>edit</strong> icon. Open the <strong>Filtering
|
||
and blocking</strong> section and then you can specify <strong>blocked
|
||
accounts</strong> or domains (one per line).</p>
|
||
<p>When creating a block you can also add a space followed by any text
|
||
describing the reason for the block. This can help as a reminder as to
|
||
why you blocked someone. Such as:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>chud@chuddydomain.com Slobbering. Ferocious. Carnivorous. Underground.
|
||
sealion@endlessreplies.net Another bad faith "debater"</code></pre>
|
||
<p>Be sure to select <strong>Publish</strong> to finalize your
|
||
settings.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="federated-blocklists">Federated blocklists</h3>
|
||
<p>If you have the admin or moderator role then there is a section
|
||
within <strong>Filtering and blocking</strong> called <strong>Blocking
|
||
API endpoints</strong>. This can be used to subscribe to remote
|
||
blocklist URLs, and may be useful in situations where for example you
|
||
have multiple instances set up for an organisation and want them to all
|
||
use the same blocklist.</p>
|
||
<p>Federated blocklists should be a json endpoint accessible via HTTP
|
||
GET, and can either be a simple list of strings, where the strings are
|
||
blocked account handles or domains:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>[
|
||
"@asshat@angrychuds.com",
|
||
"@replyguy@endlessly.replying.net",
|
||
"tedious.domain"
|
||
]</code></pre>
|
||
<p>Or they can be a list of dictionaries:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>[
|
||
{
|
||
'id': 123,
|
||
'username': '@asshat@angrychuds.com',
|
||
'email': 'null',
|
||
'status': 'block',
|
||
'created_at': None,
|
||
'updated_at': None
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
'id': 124,
|
||
'username': '@replyguy@endlessly.replying.net',
|
||
'email': 'null',
|
||
'status': 'block',
|
||
'created_at': None,
|
||
'updated_at': None
|
||
},
|
||
{
|
||
'id': 125,
|
||
'username': '@tedious.domain',
|
||
'email': 'null',
|
||
'status': 'block',
|
||
'created_at': None,
|
||
'updated_at': None
|
||
}
|
||
]</code></pre>
|
||
<p><strong>Caution:</strong> When subscribing to a federated blocklist
|
||
you need to have a high degree of trust in the people maintaining it. If
|
||
they turn out to be untrustworthy or malevolent then they can
|
||
potentially render your instance useless by blocking all your followed
|
||
domains.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="replacing-words">Replacing words</h3>
|
||
<p>Sometimes you may want to replace words within received posts. This
|
||
can be for added clarity, to dissipate annoyance or just for fun.</p>
|
||
<p>From the main timeline select the top banner to go to your profile,
|
||
then select the <strong>edit</strong> icon. Open the <strong>Filtering
|
||
and blocking</strong> section and then you can specify replacements as
|
||
follows:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>OldWord -> NewWord
|
||
original phrase -> new phrase</code></pre>
|
||
<p>These replacements are subjective, such that if you
|
||
boost/repeat/announce a post then the original wording will be retained
|
||
for recipients.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="content-warning-lists">Content warning lists</h3>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p>From the main timeline select the top banner to go to your profile,
|
||
then select the <strong>edit</strong> icon. Open the <strong>Filtering
|
||
and blocking</strong> section and look for <strong>“Add content warnings
|
||
for the following sites”</strong>. You can then select the types of
|
||
warnings to be added to your timeline.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="emergencies">Emergencies</h2>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p>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 <em>broch mode</em>, 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.</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="themes">Themes</h1>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="standard-themes">Standard themes</h2>
|
||
<p>Epicyon has multiple standard themes and if you are the administrator
|
||
then if you edit your profile and open the <em>Graphic design</em>
|
||
section then you can change the current theme for the instance. Users
|
||
may need to reload the web page with <em>CTRL+F5</em> in order to see
|
||
the changes.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="theme-customization">Theme customization</h2>
|
||
<p>If you have the <em>artist</em> role then from the top of the left
|
||
column of the main timeline you can select the <em>Theme Designer</em>
|
||
icon, which usually resembles a paint roller or paint brush. This allows
|
||
you to change colors and values for user interface components.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-theme-designer.png" alt="Theme designer screen" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Theme designer screen</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h1 id="buying-and-selling">Buying and selling</h1>
|
||
<p>When creating a new post you have the option of specifying a <em>buy
|
||
link</em> This is a link to a web page where you can buy some particular
|
||
item. When someone receives the post if they have a compatible instance
|
||
then a small shopping cart icon will appear at the bottom of the post
|
||
along with the other icons. Clicking or pressing the shopping cart will
|
||
then take you to the buying site. It’s a predictable and machine
|
||
parsable way indicating that something is for sale, separate from the
|
||
post content.</p>
|
||
<p>To avoid spam, it is possible for the shopping icon to only appear if
|
||
it links to one of an allowed list of seller domains. In this way you
|
||
can be confident that you are only navigating to approved sites.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="sharing-economy">Sharing economy</h1>
|
||
<p>This is intended to add <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network">Freecycle</a>
|
||
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.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="adding-a-shared-item">Adding a shared item</h2>
|
||
<p>When creating a new post one of the scope options is called
|
||
<em>shares</em>. You can describe an item or service that you are
|
||
willing to share.</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p>It is optionally possible to display the shared item on your profile,
|
||
which makes it <em>fully public to the whole internet</em>. Only a small
|
||
number of shared items can be shown on your profile though, which is
|
||
decided via the command option <em>–maxSharesOnProfile</em>.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-new-share.png" alt="Adding a new shared item" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Adding a new shared item</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h2 id="adding-a-wanted-item">Adding a wanted item</h2>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="new-shares">New shares</h2>
|
||
<p>When new shared items are added then in the left column of the main
|
||
timeline screen there will be a section showing recent shares.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="shared-and-wanted-items-timelines">Shared and wanted items
|
||
timelines</h2>
|
||
<p>Any items shared or wanted will appear within timelines, which can be
|
||
viewed by selecting the <em>show/hide</em> icon.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="federated-shares">Federated shares</h2>
|
||
<p>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 <em>Shares</em> 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.</p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="search">Search</h1>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-search.jpg" alt="Search screen" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Search screen</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p><strong>Hashtag categories</strong></p>
|
||
<p>If you select <em>SHOW MORE</em> at the bottom of the search screen
|
||
then this will show all recent hashtags, in alphabetical order. If you
|
||
have the <em>editor</em> role then selecting a tag will then allow to to
|
||
assign a category to it. In this way you can build up <em>hashtag
|
||
categories</em> as a way to group tags together under subject headings.
|
||
For example, <em>cake</em> might be under a <em>food</em> category.</p>
|
||
<p>The hashtag categories are published as an RSS feed at
|
||
https://yourdomain/categories.xml, and editors on other instances can
|
||
add those feeds to their newswire. This enables the categorization of
|
||
hashtags to be crowdsourced between instances.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Searching for a fediverse handle or profile URL</strong></p>
|
||
<p>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.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Searching your posts</strong></p>
|
||
<p>To search your own posts prefix the search text with a single quote
|
||
character.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Searching hashtags</strong></p>
|
||
<p>To search for a hashtag just enter it, complete with the hash
|
||
prefix.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Searching shared items</strong></p>
|
||
<p>To search for any shared items just enter the text that you want to
|
||
search for.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Searching wanted items</strong></p>
|
||
<p>To search for a wanted item then enter the text that you want to
|
||
search for prefixed by a full stop (period) character.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Searching for skills</strong></p>
|
||
<p>To search for accounts having a particular skill, prefix your search
|
||
text with a star character.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Searching for emojis</strong></p>
|
||
<p>To search for an emoji use its name prefixed by a colon
|
||
character.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="browsing-in-a-command-shell">Browsing in a command shell</h1>
|
||
<p>Since the web interface of Epicyon only needs HTML5 and CSS, it can
|
||
work with browsers which don’t implement javascript at all.</p>
|
||
<p>Screenshots within the preceding sections all assume that you are
|
||
using a common graphical web browser. However, it is also possible to
|
||
use Epicyon from a shell browser, such as <a
|
||
href="https://lynx.invisible-island.net">Lynx</a>. This may be better
|
||
suited for use with screen readers, or if you want to check your social
|
||
media while logged into a server via <em>ssh</em>.</p>
|
||
<p>If you are using <em>Lynx</em> then you will need to ensure that it
|
||
is configured for the <strong>utf-8</strong> character set, and that you
|
||
have emoji fonts installed (eg. <strong>noto-fonts-emoji</strong>). Edit
|
||
your <em>lynx.cfg</em> file (usually in <em>/etc/lynx.cfg</em>) and
|
||
set:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>CHARACTER_SET:utf-8</code></pre>
|
||
<p>To avoid annoying questions you may also want to set:</p>
|
||
<pre class="text"><code>ACCEPT_ALL_COOKIES:TRUE</code></pre>
|
||
<p>After logging in you will see a menu, which are shortcuts to
|
||
different screens.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-lynx-menu.png"
|
||
alt="Menu viewed within a shell browser" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Menu viewed within a shell
|
||
browser</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p>Timelines will look something like the following.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-lynx-inbox.png"
|
||
alt="Inbox viewed within a shell browser" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Inbox viewed within a shell
|
||
browser</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h1 id="content-licenses">Content licenses</h1>
|
||
<p>ActivityPub posts are really just content on a website and so are
|
||
subject to copyright rules. Historically, the copyright status of posts
|
||
was always left as ambiguous but in Epicyon for the avoidance of
|
||
disputes it is made explicit. Setting the scope of a post, such as being
|
||
to followers only, is not sufficient to indicate how that post is
|
||
intended to be used.</p>
|
||
<p>Content licensing is at the instance level, and set by the
|
||
administrator. Log in as the administrator and then go to <em>instance
|
||
settings</em>. From there you can set the content license, which should
|
||
be the URL for the full license text.</p>
|
||
<p>When subsequently creating posts a small copyright icon will appear,
|
||
which then links back to the license.</p>
|
||
<p>The choice of content license is for the instance administrator to
|
||
decide, but it is recommended that <a
|
||
href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode">non-commercial
|
||
creative commons licenses</a> may be enough to deter some of the worst
|
||
abuses of <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_data">personally
|
||
identifiable information</a> by BigTech companies.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="building-fediverse-communities">Building fediverse
|
||
communities</h1>
|
||
<p>The great thing about running a small instance is that you can do
|
||
things in whatever manner you prefer. What follows is a few guidelines
|
||
which may help.</p>
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img src="manual-fediverse.png" alt="Fediverse logo" />
|
||
<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Fediverse logo</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p><strong>Have a working backup system</strong></p>
|
||
<p>Keeping backups is very important, and fortunately with Epicyon this
|
||
is a simple process. The Epicyon installation consists only of files in
|
||
a directory. There is no database. So just backing up the directory
|
||
where it resides - typically <em>/opt/epicyon</em> - is all that you
|
||
need to do. Once you have a backup system in place, test that it
|
||
works.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>The fediverse is not an open source Twitter</strong></p>
|
||
<p>This sounds like a trite comment, but if you have members on your
|
||
instance coming from Twitter and expecting it to be the same sort of
|
||
thing then they will be disappointed. A major difference is that the
|
||
fediverse is more about conversation rather than one-way broadcast.
|
||
Sites like Twitter encourage you to become an “influencer” and adopt a
|
||
style of communication where you are shouting to a large audience
|
||
without much expectation of dialogue.</p>
|
||
<p>On the website formerly known as Twitter there is an algorithm which
|
||
will make follow suggestions and dump all manner of aggravating trash
|
||
into your timeline. On the fediverse if you want to connect with people
|
||
then you will need to be more proactive in going out to <em>find the
|
||
others</em>. There is no algorithm trying to guess what you want without
|
||
your participation. Zuckerberg’s Threads is an exception to this, but
|
||
the less said about that the better.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Robustly remove bad actors</strong></p>
|
||
<p>If people are creating a problem or bringing trouble and are not
|
||
amenable to changing their ways, whether they are members of your
|
||
instance or not, then be prepared to block or suspend their accounts.
|
||
Remember that <em>trolls will destroy your community if you let
|
||
them</em>. Define your <em>terms of service</em> and apply it
|
||
consistently to anyone interacting with your instance.</p>
|
||
<p><strong>Curate your experience</strong></p>
|
||
<p>Add links to the left column and blog or podcast feeds to the right.
|
||
Choose links which are relevant to your community so that useful
|
||
information is one click away. If you have multiple people on your
|
||
instance then assign roles to them so that they have a stake in
|
||
maintaining a good experience.</p>
|
||
<h1 id="a-brief-history-of-the-fediverse">A Brief History of the
|
||
Fediverse</h1>
|
||
<h2 id="the-problems-with-centralization">The problems with
|
||
Centralization</h2>
|
||
<h3 id="censorship">Censorship</h3>
|
||
<p>When everybody is in a single database the whims of whoever owns that
|
||
database become paramount.</p>
|
||
<p>Maybe this week the owner doesn’t like the posts of cancer survivors.
|
||
Maybe next week they don’t like transgender people. Maybe another week
|
||
they don’t like people resisting fascists on the street. All these
|
||
accounts can be speedily closed, erasing history, and in practice things
|
||
like this have actually happened many times.</p>
|
||
<p>Admittedly in the case of the website formerly known as Twitter it
|
||
probably isn’t a single server or a single database, but via
|
||
virtualization technologies we can consider it to be such. What matters
|
||
mostly is who owns and controls the system, and that the system behaves
|
||
as a single cohesive entity with a unified policy.</p>
|
||
<p>Censorship on sites like Twitter/X and Facebook has been an ongoing
|
||
problem for many years. If there has been a trend it has been one of
|
||
increasing pressure from nation states to comply with local laws, or
|
||
just the wishes of the powerful to suppress inconvenient home truths and
|
||
interfere with people organizing protests. Any event with “social action
|
||
potential” can transform into a challenge to entrenched power
|
||
structures.</p>
|
||
<p>Beginning with the Arab Spring in 2011, internet shutdowns became
|
||
increasingly common, but even in places where the internet is
|
||
operational there can still be domain blocks against the biggest social
|
||
network systems. The obvious examples of this is China’s Great Firewall
|
||
or Iran’s national internet, but there are many other similar cases of
|
||
selective blocking.</p>
|
||
<p>Having the ability to avoid censorship, either by the centralized
|
||
social networks or by governments at the ISP level is useful, and being
|
||
able to run your own social networks is one way of achieving that.</p>
|
||
<p>In a federated system some servers may get blocked by censors, but
|
||
the rest of the system can still continue to be operational. You get to
|
||
decide by what rules the community is governed.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="algorithmic-timelines">Algorithmic Timelines</h3>
|
||
<p>The algorithmic timeline might seem like a good idea at first. After
|
||
all, people have limited time to mess around on social networks so maybe
|
||
they just want to see the highlights.</p>
|
||
<p>Unfortunately it’s never quite that simple. The website formerly
|
||
known as Twitter started using an algorithmic timeline in 2016 and
|
||
Facebook many years before that. Algorithmic timelines give whoever
|
||
controls the system the ability to promote or censor content as they
|
||
wish, and their wishes may bear no relationship to the wishes of the
|
||
user.</p>
|
||
<p><em>“When the linear timeline was removed in favor of their own
|
||
algorithmic sort, they removed our control over the conversation
|
||
entirely. Instead of you and your friends in discourse with each other,
|
||
you’re talking around the sources of content you’re being told to see,
|
||
read, and like. You are in direct competition with a corporate notion of
|
||
your personal history, identity, and relationships.”</em></p>
|
||
<p>In 2012 Facebook used its algorithmic timeline <a
|
||
href="https://www.wired.com/2014/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-facebooks-manipulative-experiment/">to
|
||
manipulate the emotions of its users</a> in a week long experiment. None
|
||
of the experimental subjects gave consent. By promoting or removing
|
||
happy or sad content the collective mood could be artificially swayed
|
||
one way or another. It’s likely that other similar experiments have
|
||
occurred quietly without any media attention.</p>
|
||
<p>Algorithmic timelines also mean that different users see a different
|
||
version of events. For any given post, maybe you see it now or maybe
|
||
later or perhaps not at all, depending upon what the algorithm decides
|
||
is priority. This reduces the potential for coordinated activities.</p>
|
||
<p>A well known problem with algorithmic timelines is “shadow banning”.
|
||
You are sending out posts, but the algorithms decide that they all have
|
||
zero ranking priority and so your friends never seem them. You think
|
||
you’re communicating, but actually you’re not.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="echo-chambers-and-outrage-culture">Echo chambers and outrage
|
||
culture</h3>
|
||
<p>What happens when you put millions of people from many different
|
||
cultures into an online space where they can’t avoid each other? This is
|
||
the experiment which the centralized social network systems have been
|
||
performing.</p>
|
||
<p>People have conflicting opinions and expected norms, so when they’re
|
||
in a confined space and don’t have much control over what gets into
|
||
their stream they will of course fight with each other.</p>
|
||
<p>This can result in endless bickering, ALLCAPS RANTS, harassment,
|
||
bikeshedding, egobattles and call-outs. It soon gets emotionally
|
||
draining and can have serious psychological and sometimes physical
|
||
consequences. The website formerly known as Twitter today is a more or
|
||
less endless stream of outrage and neonazi talking points.</p>
|
||
<p>The echo chamber is the opposite. You only talk to a small circle of
|
||
friends and never meet anyone outside of your ingroup. There’s a lot of
|
||
complaining about bubble effects, but in practice this rarely happens
|
||
since algorithmic timelines don’t give the user enough control to be
|
||
able to remain strictly within their bubble.</p>
|
||
<p>The ideal is somewhere between being in a bubble and being in an
|
||
overcrowded and antagonistic space suffering from endless linguistic
|
||
combat. Federation provides this kind of model.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="the-silo-feedback-loop">The Silo Feedback Loop</h3>
|
||
<p>The various features of the centralized silo systems create a
|
||
feedback loop which encourages “engagement” and enables paying customers
|
||
to manipulate opinions.</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Organization buys targeted ads</li>
|
||
<li>Algorithmic timeline changes to display them</li>
|
||
<li>User experience changes due to altered timeline</li>
|
||
<li>Analytics of resulting user behaviour</li>
|
||
<li>Devise new ad campaign</li>
|
||
<li>Repeat</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<p>The silo systems can use data mining and machine learning methods to
|
||
maximize the engagement of users with ads. Typically the AI will learn
|
||
that in order to get the biggest results the ads should target people in
|
||
a manner which causes shock and outrage, resulting in furious replies
|
||
and flamewars. “Look at this terrible thing!”, etc.</p>
|
||
<p>When the ads are of a political or psyops nature obviously this can
|
||
have significant adverse effects upon the society if enough targeted
|
||
advertising is deployed. Even if the silo system has a policy which
|
||
forbids this it’s hard for them to automatically detect political
|
||
campaigns which may be quite subtle and manipulative in their messaging.
|
||
They also have a strong incentive to take as much money as they can,
|
||
regardless of its origin or intentions.</p>
|
||
<p>The absence of centrally controlled algorithmic timelines prevents
|
||
this kind of feedback loop from being deliberately created within the
|
||
fediverse.</p>
|
||
<p>If the timeline is purely chronological, or if it’s controlled by the
|
||
user, then it’s not possible to buy influence over opinions in the same
|
||
manner.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="corporate-versus-community-interests">Corporate versus Community
|
||
Interests</h3>
|
||
<p><em>“Centralised systems lead to increasingly monotonous and
|
||
unaccountable power. Over time this encourages exploitation and
|
||
disinterest in user needs.”</em></p>
|
||
<p>– Irina Bolychevsky</p>
|
||
<p>Naive people might believe that Facebook is just a place to hang out
|
||
and chat with friends. But there aren’t many folks that naive in
|
||
existence anymore.</p>
|
||
<p>Facebook doesn’t actually care whether the user experience is good or
|
||
not, so long as its advertising customers can target their users and the
|
||
money keeps rolling in. This is certainly reflected in the horrible user
|
||
interface.</p>
|
||
<p>The interests of major internet companies are not necessarily the
|
||
same as the interests of internet users. Often the interests are badly
|
||
out of alignment.</p>
|
||
<p>The companies - especially the big ones - are only concerned about
|
||
profits and share holders. Things like keeping Mark Zuckerberg in the
|
||
top ten list of oligarchs. They’re not concerned about you or your
|
||
community, because you’re small fry and they are the Tech Geniuses
|
||
living in McMansions and driving expensive CyberTrucks.</p>
|
||
<p>Federation is one way to bring the interests back into alignment and
|
||
cut the oligarchs with their inflated egos and self-entitlement out of
|
||
the picture. If you keep the number of users on an instance small then
|
||
there is not much power differential between the admin and the users,
|
||
and probably their concerns are similar.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="dimensions-of-decentralization">Dimensions of
|
||
Decentralization</h2>
|
||
<p>Decentralized systems can be conceptualized along three axes, forming
|
||
the Governance Cube.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="logical">Logical</h3>
|
||
<p>If you divide the system in half will they continue to function or
|
||
fail catastrophically.</p>
|
||
<p>Can you combine systems which previously ran separately into a larger
|
||
one, without losing any functionality or having clashing
|
||
indexes/hashes.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="political">Political</h3>
|
||
<p>Is the system controlled by a single individual or a single
|
||
organization, or is it controlled by many people or different
|
||
organizations.</p>
|
||
<p>Do you need anyone’s permission to run the system.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="architectural">Architectural</h3>
|
||
<p>How many computers is the system running on, and how geographically
|
||
dispersed are they. Are they all in a single warehouse or in many homes
|
||
and offices.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="examples">Examples</h3>
|
||
<p>Bitcoin: Logically centralized, Architecturally decentralized (apart
|
||
from mining), politically decentralized (mostly)</p>
|
||
<p>Traditional corporations: Logically centralized, Architecturally
|
||
centralized, Politically centralized</p>
|
||
<p>Fediverse: Logically decentralized, Politically decentralized,
|
||
Architecturally decentralized. Fediverse might be considered politically
|
||
centralized, but only at the instance level.</p>
|
||
<p>Signal App: Logically centralized, Politically centralized,
|
||
Architecturally centralized (single server)</p>
|
||
<p>SSB: Logically decentralized, Politically decentralized,
|
||
Architecturally decentralized</p>
|
||
<p>A system which was politically centralized but logically and
|
||
architecturally decentralized would be where everyone could run their
|
||
own solid-like data pods and control permissions to their data, but
|
||
identity would be centrally managed by a single organization.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="problems-with-the-website-formerly-known-as-twitter">Problems
|
||
with the website formerly known as Twitter</h2>
|
||
<p>Particular problems with Twitter, especially from 2016 onwards after
|
||
the introduction of algorithmic timelines were:</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Centralised</li>
|
||
<li>Proprietary, so forking and doing something better wasn’t an
|
||
option</li>
|
||
<li>They forced you to ID yourself with a phone number</li>
|
||
<li>They handed your data to third party companies</li>
|
||
<li>Most governments were using it to ID people saying bad things about
|
||
them</li>
|
||
<li>Ads and corporate campaigns</li>
|
||
<li>Heavy handed censorship, or refusal to remove users who were
|
||
violating TOS merely because of their celebrity status</li>
|
||
<li>Refusal to deal with obvious bot accounts, used for spying or
|
||
creating an economy of fake followers</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h2 id="peers-and-federalists">Peers and Federalists</h2>
|
||
<p>The ideal state of the web would be peer to peer. There would be
|
||
perfect scalability due to there being no bandwidth choke points. All
|
||
data would be content addressible, replicated and seeded by its users.
|
||
DDoS would be practically impossible. Each peer would make their own
|
||
decisions about which others to connect to and what data to share.</p>
|
||
<p>The web today is the opposite of this, and is increasingly
|
||
centralised. Policies about what type of content is permitted or not
|
||
tend to be global and defined by the terms of service a few
|
||
megacorporations.</p>
|
||
<p>Both of these have disadvantages. The centralised web tries to impose
|
||
a single standard for connectivity and content onto the whole world. The
|
||
peer to peer situation means that each individual is captain of their
|
||
own ship and makes their own decisions about who to connect to and what
|
||
to share, but this may sometimes involve a lot of duplicated curation
|
||
effort.</p>
|
||
<p>Federation offers a third way of doing things, in which decisions
|
||
about what is or isn’t acceptable may be partly collectivized, but not
|
||
to a totalizing extent as in the centralized case. This allows peers to
|
||
offload some of their preferences to their affinity group, which may
|
||
improve the user experience and reduce cognitive workload. For example,
|
||
collective defense against known bad entities.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="pseudonymity">Pseudonymity</h2>
|
||
<p>After the web 2.0 systems appeared in the mid 2000s so too did a
|
||
consensus that “real names” were preferable to pseudonyms.</p>
|
||
<p>The thinking was that if users are anonymous then they’re more likely
|
||
to indulge in antisocial behavior, because there are likely to be no
|
||
real world repercussions.</p>
|
||
<p>In the fediverse, as on earlier internet systems, pseudonyms are used
|
||
predominantly and there have been no “real name” policies so far.</p>
|
||
<p>The evolution of Facebook and to a much lesser extent Google+
|
||
provided good evidence that “real names” do not necessarily produce
|
||
civility. Instead “real names” are much more about producing a
|
||
consistent social graph for use by advertisers. If you know someone’s
|
||
specific identity then its much easier to target them with advertising
|
||
and send traditional junk mail to their home address.</p>
|
||
<p>So the obsession with “real names” was largely about commercial
|
||
motives rather than improving the discourse.</p>
|
||
<p>Full anonymity where there isn’t a consistent username or where many
|
||
users are on the same account is difficult to handle because it makes
|
||
spammers hard to block, but pseudonymity where users have a persistent
|
||
and unique username/address which is not necessarily linked to any
|
||
“legal person” appears to be optimal.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="gnu-socialites">GNU Socialites</h2>
|
||
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social">GNU Social</a> was
|
||
released in 2013, based upon the earlier StatusNet code, written in
|
||
PHP.</p>
|
||
<p>In contrast to the release announcement, which talked of
|
||
“professional quality code”, the software contained a large amount of
|
||
cruft.</p>
|
||
<p>Initial cruft included a lot of links to Google, including long
|
||
obsolete Google projects such as <a
|
||
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz">Buzz</a>. Initial tasks
|
||
were to remove any dependencies upon proprietary systems.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="the-quitter-era">The Quitter Era</h3>
|
||
<p>Between 2013 and 2016 the most popular GNU Social instances ran with
|
||
the Qvitter user interface, which closely resembled the earlier and more
|
||
user friendly appearance of Twitter, before a lot of junk was added. It
|
||
was developed primarily by Hannes Mannerheim from August 2013
|
||
onwards.</p>
|
||
<p>These instances had domains like quitter.se or quitter.no. They had
|
||
explicitly anti-capitalist branding, with “quitter” being a reference to
|
||
“quitting Twitter”.</p>
|
||
<p>Unlike the classic GNU Social user interface, which was unchanged
|
||
from the pre-2012 StatusNet days, Qvitter used javascript. There was
|
||
widespread distrust of javascript at that time, so the more security
|
||
conscious folks tended to use non-Quitter instances.</p>
|
||
<p>During the Quitter Era most users were either Free Software
|
||
developers/supporters, or anarchists seeking to socially organize
|
||
autonomously from the corporate systems. Anarchist slogans intermingled
|
||
with Stallman and GNU memes were common.</p>
|
||
<p>By the end of 2016 the main focus of fediverse activity was shifting
|
||
away from GNU Social and towards the shiny new Mastodon system.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="postactiv">PostActiv</h3>
|
||
<p>Development on GNU Social was slow, and mostly confined to
|
||
international translations.</p>
|
||
<p>As a consequence of slow developent, in 2016 a fork of GNU Social was
|
||
created called postActiv . PostActiv was developed by Maiyannah Bishop,
|
||
with the aim of tidying the code, adding comments and improving the
|
||
message queue buffering.</p>
|
||
<p>The postActiv fork was not an acrimonious one, and it was recommended
|
||
by the main GNU Social developer, Mikael Nordfeldth.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="here-come-the-elephants">Here come the Elephants</h2>
|
||
<p>Mastodon started gaining popularity towards the end of 2016. At that
|
||
time it was based around a single instance called mastodon.social.</p>
|
||
<p>It was initially viewed skeptically by the users of GNU Social
|
||
instances, as being a cult based around the personality of its young
|
||
developer, Eugen Rochko.</p>
|
||
<p>This system was promoted as being like Twitter, but with a zero
|
||
tolerance policy towards far right or alt-right agitators. The “lack of
|
||
nazis” was enough of a motivator to get some users to move over from
|
||
Twitter.</p>
|
||
<p>Mastodon introduced a new concept to the fediverse - the content
|
||
warning. Content warnings could also be considered as ultra brief
|
||
content summaries, allowing the user to rapidly skip over posts which
|
||
were probably not of interest.</p>
|
||
<p>What content warnings (or one line summaries) allowed users to do was
|
||
to follow numbers of other users above the Dunbar limit and without
|
||
necessarily having a high degree of affinity with them, while also
|
||
avoiding the cognitive overload which would otherwise result. In effect,
|
||
content warnings were an alternative to the algorithmic timeline,
|
||
producing the same compressing effect without the down sides of
|
||
censorship and shadowbans.</p>
|
||
<p>People on Twitter had been requesting user interface changes to
|
||
improve usability and getting nowhere for years, but were happily
|
||
surprised that the Mastodon developer was much more responsive to
|
||
suggestions.</p>
|
||
<p>Mastodon initially set its character limit to 500 - much higher than
|
||
Twitter’s 140 at the time, but typically lower than many GNU Social
|
||
instances which defaulted to 2000.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="appearance">Appearance</h3>
|
||
<p>A variety of factors contributed to the early popularity of Mastodon,
|
||
and one of those factors was its similarity to an already familiar
|
||
Twitter user interface, called Tweetdeck.</p>
|
||
<p>From early on Mastodon seems to have attracted many artists, and as a
|
||
consequence it tended to have better quality artwork for its logos than
|
||
other fediverse projects - and Free Software projects in general.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="changing-demographics">Changing demographics</h3>
|
||
<p>With the rise of Mastodon in 2017 the gender composition of the
|
||
fediverse noticeably changed from being mostly masculine (maybe 80% at a
|
||
guess) towards being much more even. Mastodon had broad appeal and
|
||
brought in new demographics which were not confined to people interested
|
||
in technology.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="the-first-million">The First Million</h3>
|
||
<p>At the end of 2017 Mastodon had a million user accounts. However,
|
||
taking into account that many of those would be dormant, or bots, a more
|
||
realistic estimate of active users would between 100 and 200
|
||
thousand.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="new-design-features">New Design Features</h3>
|
||
<p>Mastodon also introduced new design features which were intended to
|
||
reduce the potential for harassment. On Mastodon systems you could
|
||
search on hashtags, but not do arbitrary searches of an instance for
|
||
arbitrary text.</p>
|
||
<p>This was an attempt to mitigate lowbrow adversaries who would
|
||
otherwise search through the system looking for keywords (like maybe
|
||
“feminist”) and then dogpile those users with insulting posts.</p>
|
||
<p>Lowbrow dogpiling attacks of this kind had been common on Twitter for
|
||
a number of years, so anything which frustrated the most dim-witted
|
||
adversaries was still useful.</p>
|
||
<p>Mastodon was the first web application in production to adopt
|
||
ActivityPub for server-to-server communication, and it was available at
|
||
the beginning of 2018.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="activitypub-adoption">ActivityPub Adoption</h3>
|
||
<p>Mastodon adopted the ActivityPub protocol at the beginning of 2018.
|
||
It only used the server-to-server part of the protocol, and not the
|
||
server-to-client. The implementation of ActivityPub within Mastodon then
|
||
became primary reference for other instance software, such as Pleroma.
|
||
The earlier OStatus protocol continued to be supported.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="the-decline-and-fall-of-ostatus">The decline and fall of
|
||
Ostatus</h3>
|
||
<p>In May 2019 the Mastodon project maintainer announced plans to
|
||
deprecate the OStatus protocol, which had been superceded by
|
||
ActivityPub.</p>
|
||
<p><em>“In 3.0, it is time to remove OStatus from Mastodon. Mastodon has
|
||
not been designed as a multi-platform system and supporting a legacy
|
||
platform creates messy and confusing code. Furthermore, the OStatus code
|
||
has not been receiving the same performance and security improvements,
|
||
in many parts because the OStatus protocol is inherently less secure in
|
||
some aspects.”</em></p>
|
||
<h3 id="little-hitlers-and-smalltime-internet-tyrants">Little Hitlers
|
||
and smalltime internet tyrants</h3>
|
||
<p>In July 2019 the white supremacist social network gab dot com
|
||
switched from its formerly proprietary codebase over to using a fork of
|
||
Mastodon. This caused a lot of concern among the existing userbase, who
|
||
up to that point had been mostly left wing or anarchist. The Mastodon
|
||
project blog issued a statement.</p>
|
||
<p><em>“Mastodon is completely opposed to Gab’s project and philosophy,
|
||
which seeks to monetize and platform racist content while hiding behind
|
||
the banner of free speech.”</em></p>
|
||
<p>Upon launch gab dot com claimed to have added another million users
|
||
to the fediverse, but upon closer scrutiny these figures had been
|
||
deliberately inflated via the inclusion of dormant legacy accounts
|
||
carried over from their previous database. The site also removed the
|
||
active users count which would otherwise reveal the diminutive volume of
|
||
their actual userbase.</p>
|
||
<p>The appearance of an openly neo-nazi instance accelerated interest in
|
||
improving the security and moderation capabilities of Mastodon, and the
|
||
discussion of Object Capabilities or “authorized fetch”. Many Mastodon
|
||
instances preemptively blocked gab dot com and its affiliated sites even
|
||
before they had officially launched, such was the revulsion.</p>
|
||
<p>There was also the irony of people espousing extreme hatred of
|
||
minority groups adopting a software system largely created by and for
|
||
those very same groups. Effectively they were admitting that the
|
||
proprietary approach had failed and that software built by people they
|
||
viewed as enemies was technically superior to anything that “the master
|
||
race” could hamfistedly kludge together themselves.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="migrations-and-exoduses">Migrations and Exoduses</h2>
|
||
<p>There have been many waves of incoming users. From time to time,
|
||
typically once or twice per year, the website formerly known as Twitter,
|
||
Facebook or other silo systems will just decide that they don’t like a
|
||
certain type of user and begin closing or suspending their accounts or
|
||
groups.</p>
|
||
<p>In other cases a celebrity will be shadowbanned or suspended, which
|
||
then causes a scandal among their followers and a desire for the fandom
|
||
to relocate.</p>
|
||
<p>These are the biggest exoduses so far:</p>
|
||
<h3 id="identi.ca-in-trouble">2011/12: Identi.ca in trouble</h3>
|
||
<p>Towards the end of 2011 identi.ca started to experience multi-day or
|
||
multi-week outages. Its developer advised that anyone complaining create
|
||
their own instances, and thus the first migration wave began out of the
|
||
original silo system.</p>
|
||
<p>Evan wanted to change the posts size of identi.ca from 140
|
||
characters, like Twitter at the time, to something larger. There was a
|
||
harsh backlash, so some of those who wanted to maintain the traditional
|
||
length created their own federated sites, or used hosted ones which
|
||
could be paid for to support the main development.</p>
|
||
<p>By that time identi.ca was running out of money and its end was
|
||
immanent.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="twitters-algorithmic-timeline">2016: Twitter’s Algorithmic
|
||
Timeline</h3>
|
||
<p>In early 2016 the website formerly known as Twitter introduced an
|
||
algorithmic timeline. Algorithmic timelines mean that the posts which
|
||
other users see depend upon an opaque algorithm created by the company.
|
||
The result is that it’s possible to post to the system but not be seen
|
||
by anyone, or whoever your target audience is. This is known as “shadow
|
||
banning”.</p>
|
||
<p>The combined effects of shadow banning plus overt censorship resulted
|
||
in a large influx into the fediverse. At times my GNU Social stream was
|
||
a crazy firehoze of all kinds of random stuff.</p>
|
||
<p>The established Quitter instances were soon overloaded with users,
|
||
and as a consequence new instances were set up. The most notable of
|
||
these was shitposter.club.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="mastodon-goes-viral">2017: Mastodon goes Viral</h3>
|
||
<p>Around about April 2017 Mastodon went viral. It started getting lots
|
||
of mentions on the website formerly known as Twitter, and some
|
||
mainstream technology journalists were writing about it. Many people
|
||
thought it was new - which was true, but only in a narrow sense - and
|
||
likely to become The Next Big Thing.</p>
|
||
<p>Once again there was a large exodus of users out of Twitter and into
|
||
the fediverse. My stream was going crazy, with hundreds of posts every
|
||
few minutes.</p>
|
||
<p>This exodus was more driven by hype than by Twitter doing anything
|
||
especially bad to its users. By that time most users had accepted and
|
||
internalized the fact that the site had become a perpetual dumpster fire
|
||
of hostility and unwanted content.</p>
|
||
<p>The technology journalism about Mastodon was of a comically poor
|
||
standard. Most journalists fundamentally misunderstood the main concepts
|
||
and so ended up making irrelevant criticisms. They mostly suffered from
|
||
fediverse culture shock.</p>
|
||
<p>Prior to the Mastodon craze, its developer had placed some ads for it
|
||
on the website formerly known as Twitter. Twitter being a bunch of
|
||
clueless corporate drones, they weren’t smart enough to realise that
|
||
they were advertising a competing system. The ads almost certainly
|
||
targeted technology journalists.</p>
|
||
<h4 id="end-of-the-one-true-instance">End of the One True Instance</h4>
|
||
<p>In late 2016 and early 2017, prior to going viral, Mastodon had
|
||
existed as a single instance - mastodon.social. During that time it was
|
||
heavily criticized for its OStatus federation bugs, and there seemed to
|
||
be little interest in federating with anyone. Instead it looked like
|
||
mastodon.social was aiming to be a centralized single server Twitter
|
||
clone. Like Twitter, but with a lot less tolerance for bad behavior and
|
||
a strong stance against hitlerites.</p>
|
||
<p>Once it went viral there was no way that Mastodon could remain a
|
||
single server affair with a monolithic and insular culture, and they had
|
||
to become more serious about making the federation features work for
|
||
real.</p>
|
||
<p>As is the case with each new wave of incoming users, many new
|
||
instances were set up and many of them were subsequently abandoned, or
|
||
failed to keep backups and then had database corruption or a failed hard
|
||
drive. There is always some rate of attrition. But many Mastodon
|
||
instances remained viable, with enthusiastic new communities forming
|
||
around them. The fediverse was going well beyond it’s traditional Free
|
||
Software user base, appealing to entirely new and diverse
|
||
demographics.</p>
|
||
<h4 id="celebrity-bounce">Celebrity Bounce</h4>
|
||
<p>In the April time frame various celebrities from the website formerly
|
||
known as Twitter tried joining the fediverse via Mastodon. At some point
|
||
William Shatner tried and failed to register an account or find a
|
||
journalist named Lance Ulanoff. Both of them failed to understand that
|
||
this system wasn’t identical to Twitter in the way it works. Adafruit
|
||
and a number of others also started accounts, typically on the main
|
||
mastodon.social instance.</p>
|
||
<p>But none of these celebrity accounts lasted for long. A month or two
|
||
at most. They soon realized that they would not be able to cultivate a
|
||
mass audience in the fediverse, nor would the fediverse in any way
|
||
shield them from legitimate criticism or spoof accounts mocking their
|
||
cluelessness.</p>
|
||
<p>It seems that the phemonena of celebrity requires a centralized
|
||
broadcast culture together with a legal system able to enforce personal
|
||
brands, and the fediverse does not fit that model very well at all.</p>
|
||
<h4 id="replacing-the-twitterbots">Replacing the Twitterbots</h4>
|
||
<p>Before 2017 there had been GNU Social based bots set up to import
|
||
posts from the website formerly known as Twitter for certain accounts.
|
||
After Mastodon went viral this was no longer needed so much, because
|
||
people on Twitter either moved over or maintained a fediverse account.
|
||
An example of this was Roy Schestowitz.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="a-perfect-storm">2018: A perfect storm</h3>
|
||
<p>In 2018 the exoduses didn’t let up.</p>
|
||
<p>In April the first instance for sex workers appeared. This was in
|
||
response to the SESTA act in the US, which made the more mainstream
|
||
sites nervous about hosting anything which might be related to sex work
|
||
of any kind, and as a consequence began the large scale purging of
|
||
accounts which might be related to that. The Switter instance rapidly
|
||
grew to host a large number of users displaced from various other sites
|
||
by the new law.</p>
|
||
<p>In August a combination of dreadful decisions made by the CEO of
|
||
Twitter resulted in a kind of perfect storm in which at its peak 17,000
|
||
new users arrived in a single day.</p>
|
||
<p>The factors creating the August Twitter storm were:</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Changes to the Twitter API, resulting in client apps breaking</li>
|
||
<li>A witch hunt against Terms of Service violators, almost certainly
|
||
automated via AI rather than manual vetting. Violations were often silly
|
||
things taken out of context from tweets a year or more old</li>
|
||
<li>It became increasingly obvious that the Twitter CEO’s decisions were
|
||
politically motivated, leading many users to consider themselves unsafe
|
||
on that platform</li>
|
||
<li>Closing the alt accounts of Twitter users in an attempt to
|
||
consolidate a singular identity in the same manner as Facebook. Users
|
||
often had multiple accounts for different purposes.</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<p>In early December there was another exodus, this time from Tumblr
|
||
which had adopted a new policy of banning adult content. Like Facebook,
|
||
Tublr tried to use AI to detect images containing what it called
|
||
“female-presenting nipples”, but the AI was hopelessly bad and caused an
|
||
avalanche of false positives resulting in account suspensions.</p>
|
||
<p>In the same week that Tublr began its purge of adult content Facebook
|
||
also changed its terms of service to follow suit in what appeared to be
|
||
a coordinated takedown. Facebook’s new terms forbade pretty much
|
||
anything even tangentally related to sex, including things such as the
|
||
discussion of sexual orientation or partner preferences.</p>
|
||
<p>Also in 2018 Google announced that its social network service, known
|
||
as Google+, would soon be closed. The fediverse gained some new people
|
||
as a result, although by that time the number of users on Google+ had
|
||
dwindled to a small community.</p>
|
||
<p>By the end of 2018 Facebook’s AI moderation was becoming more of a
|
||
problem for the average user of that system. Even expressing frustration
|
||
in some mild forms, such as “men are trash!”, was enough to result in
|
||
account suspension due to the misidentification of hate speech.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="tyrannical-tendencies">2019: Tyrannical tendencies</h3>
|
||
<p>With its launch in 2016 and first wave of success in early 2017
|
||
Mastodon had badged itself as the system which doesn’t accept nazis.</p>
|
||
<p>Up until 2019 migrations into the fediverse had been fairly benign
|
||
and with a large LGBTQ quotient. But 2019 was the first case of what
|
||
might be described as a hostile migration.</p>
|
||
<p>The neo-nazi site gab dot com moved its operations from its
|
||
previously failed proprietary server over to using a fork of Mastodon.
|
||
This caused a lot of alarm among existing fediverse users and instance
|
||
admins. Gab had already been banned from silo sites due to its promotion
|
||
of extreme hatred and support for acts of terrorism including mass
|
||
shootings.</p>
|
||
<p>Even before gab dot com officially re-launched at the beginning of
|
||
July fediverse admins were pre-emptively blocking federation with the
|
||
site.</p>
|
||
<p>One fediverse Android app called Tusky took a stand by building the
|
||
block on gab dot com directly into its codebase. Another app called
|
||
Fedilab announced that it would do the same, but then mysteriously
|
||
backpeddled on the decision, raising questions about its political
|
||
bias.</p>
|
||
<p>Anti-feminists attempting to spread hatred of people in the LGBT
|
||
community also used the Gab fork of Mastodon on a site called spinster,
|
||
forming an axis alliance with the nazis.</p>
|
||
<p>But the scourge of nazi boot-lickers proved to be more of a damp
|
||
squib than a Cyber-Blitzkrieg. Their instances were very isolated and
|
||
their user counts were enormously over-inflated in keeping with the
|
||
possession of a dictatorially grandiose mindset (windbags plotting world
|
||
domination while having a handful of real followers and a large number
|
||
of bots spewing conspiratorial nonsense).</p>
|
||
<p>At the end of the year one analysis discovered that of the active
|
||
users on gab dot com over 90% were news bots, with only a small number
|
||
of genuinely active accounts.</p>
|
||
<p>The lesson from the nazi migration is that containment can be a
|
||
fairly successful strategy if there is enough education about the
|
||
threat. Like an immune system isolating a dangerous pathogen. Left to
|
||
their own devices the nazis resort to turning on their own, and their
|
||
ability to mobilize and recruit becomes severely constrained.</p>
|
||
<p>A group with a centralized way of thinking and organizing also tends
|
||
to fare poorly within the jungle of decentralized horizontalists. It was
|
||
only really within the silo systems that they could reach a mass
|
||
audience.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="india-arrives">2019: India Arrives</h3>
|
||
<p>In November there was a major exodus from India into the fediverse,
|
||
after an Indian supreme court lawyer, Sanjay Hegde, was banned from the
|
||
website formerly known as Twitter resulting in a political storm in
|
||
which the Blue Bird Site was accused, unsurprisingly, of yet another
|
||
case of bias. Hegde had been critical of right wing government and had
|
||
posted a classic 1930s photo of many nazis saluting but one person
|
||
conspicuously refusing to do so.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="spanish-exodus">2019: Spanish exodus</h3>
|
||
<p>In December the website formerly known as Twitter had a purge of
|
||
Spanish leftists. Many of them showed up in the fediverse, and on
|
||
Twitter they used the hashtag <strong>YoMigroAMastodon</strong> to
|
||
encourage others to leave.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="chaos-computer-club">2019: Chaos Computer Club</h3>
|
||
<p>At the annual congress Mastodon was significantly more referenced
|
||
than in the previous two years, and some speakers asked the audience to
|
||
give feedback via Mastodon hashtags.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="the-muskening">2022: The Muskening</h3>
|
||
<p>In November, the oligarch Elon Musk, known for electric vehicles and
|
||
spacecraft, purchased the website formerly known as Twitter. One of his
|
||
first decisions was to fire most of the moderators. Admittedly, the
|
||
moderators of Twitter did an abysmal job in the years leading up to the
|
||
acquisition, but becoming an unmoderated space did not go down well with
|
||
many users or advertising customers. This resulted in perhaps the
|
||
biggest exodus up to that time.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="facebook-joins-the-fediverse">2023: Facebook joins the
|
||
fediverse</h3>
|
||
<p>In August Facebook launched its own fediverse instance, known as
|
||
Threads. This was a cynical attempt to scoop up disgruntled Twitter
|
||
users looking for an alternative social media site due to the chaos
|
||
being created by its new owner, Elon Musk. There was a lot of concern
|
||
about the evil empire of Zuckerberg joining the fediverse, and possibly
|
||
squashing it by sheer weight of numbers. A website called <a
|
||
href="https://fedipact.online">fediPact</a> was created on which
|
||
administrators could express their intention to block the Facebook
|
||
instance. Many people had come to the fediverse precisely to get away
|
||
from harassment on Facebook or Twitter, so the prospect of BigTech
|
||
companies showing up in the fediverse and perhaps taking it over was
|
||
scary.</p>
|
||
<h3 id="fediverse-culture-shock">Fediverse culture shock</h3>
|
||
<p>This is what happens when someone has only had a presence within
|
||
large corporate sites, such as the website formerly known as Twitter or
|
||
Facebook, and then moves to a federated system on the open internet.</p>
|
||
<p>Symptoms:</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li>Not understanding that there is no single company behind it all</li>
|
||
<li>Someone else must take responsibility for XYZ</li>
|
||
<li>There is no viable business model here, so this must be a passing
|
||
fad</li>
|
||
<li>I need to create my preferred username before someone else uses
|
||
it</li>
|
||
<li>I don’t like the name “Mastodon”</li>
|
||
<li>The fediverse is too fractured. I cannot spam millions of adoring
|
||
fans with my latest hot take.</li>
|
||
<li>Why are there no adverts?</li>
|
||
<li>Registering an account on each instance</li>
|
||
</ul>
|