Hey theATL.social! You're now using the latest and greatest version of Mastodon. Enjoy!  

If you like using theATL.social and its services, consider a subscription at https://join.theatl.social

Your contributions keep the servers running and deliver Mastodon and all the other services (PeachPie, Pyfedi, BlueSky PDS, etc) that theATL.social offers.

Thanks again and enjoy your quote tweets and other new goodies  

#Atlanta
#theATLSocial

Hey theATL.social 👋

There's a lot of bad stuff going on in America-land 😩

The bad folks are trying to bully and threaten social media and other information-providing orgs to censor, hide, and manipulate their algorithms to reflect the State's (highly volatile) positions.

For now, I assume that theATL.social is small potatoes in a larger ecosystem of social media giants and will probably be ignored - for now. That, and decentralization (purposely!) makes it exceedingly difficult to control information exchanged in the Fediverse.

So, with that, I want to explicitly say that #trans folx are core to our theATL.social community 🏳️‍⚧️

I'll be god-damned if anyone tells me to block, censor, or hide those voices.

That, and for as long as it is possible, I hope that theATL.social can serve as an oasis of community and communication in our current desert of troubles.

To quote Sen. Mothma:

» I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. «

#Atlanta
#theATLSocial

Hello, theATL.social!

Couple of announcements, first, going forward @admin will be the primary announcement account for instance-specific stuff.

This way, there can be some separation between my personal posting activity and more "business"-related activity.

For announcements, I'll also make use of the respective feature in Mastodon too.

With that being said, there will be a little bit of downtime shortly this evening for the upgrade to 3.7.4 of @wandy_dev 's theconnector fork, in addition to other regular maintenance.

I also have a couple of fixes on the member site to plug in too.

Thanks again to all for your support of theATL.social - both in words, financial contributions, and participation. 🌟

We're entering a stressful time in America-land, where spaces for open political communication are being threatened. I'm committed to ensuring that this instance remains a beacon of light during a time of encroaching darkness. 🗽

#Atlanta
#theATLSocial

Did ya know that theATL.social has a Lemmy server at https://yall.theatl.social?

...and that /c/AtlantaNews (https://yall.theatl.social/c/atlantanews) has 14.4k posts, 370 subscribers, and 2k comments?

I started the Lemmy server because I was getting exhausted by /r/Atlanta's heavy-handed moderation. The Atlanta News community (automatically) curates content from multiple news providers, and allows folks to comment and interact with it.

(It also lets you view Urbanize articles in full, via their RSS server...but shh...don't tell them that!)

If you haven't checked it out before, let me know what you think. I'm reviewing the news sources that feed into the community too - what should be added or removed?

#Georgia
#Atlanta
#Lemmy
#theATLSocial

Whew. I'm almost almost almost done with the new theATL.social front page/member site/about site.

It's been about a month in the making, and I thought it would be finished today, but it looks like tomorrow. Almost there, and I'm so excited to get this released and ready for current theATL.social members to use - and future paying contributors!

And a shoutout to all the financial contributors to theATL.social. Without y'all, none of this would be possible! 

#theATLSocial

Hey theATL.social!

The hackathon is done, and theATL.social financial contributors (at any level) can now signup for #BlueSky accounts with a ".theatl.social" handle 🚀

Visit https://members.theatl.social and check it out:

You can create as many accounts as you'd like, but within reason, of course!

(Note that the Members Site will ask you to re-authorize access, as there was some major rebuilding of the app).

If you could give me a heads-up if it is working for ya, that would be amazing.

And...more fun stuff is on the way too. More info in 🧵

#Atlanta
#theATLSocial

Hello, #theATLsocial!

Hope everyone is having a calm evening. Tonight I had dinner at Pizza Verdura Sincera, an amazing vegan pizza place in L5P (in #Atlanta) 🤤 (https://www.pizzaverdurasincera.com/) After such an intense week, the deliciousness was great comfort food.

And, lots of server upgrade news!

🚀 Mastodon is now updated to v4.3.1 (theATL forked 🍴 version)

🚀 #Lemmy (https://yall.theatl.social) is now updated to the latest version, 0.19.6. If you haven't yet used Lemmy (a #Fediverse version of Reddit), I'd check it out. the /c/AtlantaNews community is very active, and /c/Georgia is starting up!

🚀 Elk, another locally hosted Mastodon client (https://elk.theatl.social) is updated to 0.15.1

🚀 #Phanpy (still, yet another locally hosted Mastodon client, and my personal favorite) (https://phanpy.theatl.social) is upgraded to 2024.10.15.e3df9ff

Sending appreciation and good vibes to the financial supporters of theATL.social!  Y'all make the dream a reality through funding operating costs of the instance.

Hi #theATLsocial !

Some updates and general thoughts:

🚀 Lots of upgrades/updates on the way, including bringing this Mastodon server back to the current version, which is now 4.3.1. If there is downtime greater than a few minutes, I'll let y'all know.

🔵 BlueSky PDS will also be updated. I do need to work out a better mechanism for issuing invites - TBD.

🌐 The two current alternative web clients, Elk and Phanpy, will be updated. If you have any other clients you'd like me to deploy, let me know!

...and now the general thoughts: 🤔

My outlook on #Mastodon/Fediverse vis-a-vis #Threads and #BlueSky has been all over the place. But, post-election, the issue of data (and algorithm) sovereignty is now front-of-mind,.

When you use an app in someone else's "castle", they can always pull up the drawbridge. Mastodon instances can always pull up their drawbridge, but decentralization reduces the power that any single admin can have in the entire ecosystem.

I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that theATL.social (and other #Fediverse servers) can remain a forum for uncensored political speech (and other topics too!). There are limits, of course: no hate speech, no violence, etc.

Thank you to the members and financial supporters of theATL.social for sustaining this community and the servers/tech that makes it all happen!

Good morning, theATL.social! We’ve had a bit of spam from zombie Mastodon servers lately. Thank you for your reports and @DecaturNature ‘s work identifying the compromised servers.

These servers have now been blocked at the firewall level, and won’t be bothering us anymore 🙅

Please do send a report if you see any more spam attacks, etc. Thank you in advance!

#theATLsocial

Hi #theATLsocial !

I'm happy to announce that the upgrade was successful to 4.3.0. This upgrade includes most of the changes to the base installation, including enhanced rate limits for members. 🚀

The increased post size to 1,000 chars is pending to tomorrow or Saturday. (I wanted to upgrade to 4.3.0 ASAP as to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.)

I've been monitoring logs and all looks okay. But if you notice any issues, feel free to DM.

#Atlanta