Mastodawn

Christine Lemmer-Webber

If you wanted to make high-impact fediverse software, I would recommend making a simple daemon that does the following:

- Consumes RSS/Atom feeds
- Posts them as subscribable feeds over activitypub
- So dead easy you can host it yourself as a simple daemon on your server
- Optionally: collects replies as a comment section with a way to render them inline, a-la disqus, with some simple moderation tools. Simplest way to reduce spam would be to make it approve-only to show up on the feed.

You could extend this to allow posting on other servers etc. But, in other words, let more people use the static site generator they already have

Christine Lemmer-Webber 2d ago

The simpler, the fewer dependencies, the better. It doesn't need to be fancy. It could be Guile and sqlite, for instance (and you could use Hoot for rendering the comment stream). Something hackable but low-resources.

RodolfoRG 2d ago

@cwebber may it be done in PHP?

Imran Nazar ~ عمران نزر 2d ago

@rodolforg @cwebber It could; I've written a set of posts on how to publish over ActivityPub from PHP, and they take inspiration from a post about a single-file PHP implementation.

"Musty Bits" McGee 2d ago

@cwebber there was rss-parrot? Rss-parrot.net - dunno if it's functional still or OSS though

@cwebber Bluesky's "you can block someone from your replies by blocking them" is a good start, I think it's worth exploring to just do replies as "Ask the OP server/account what the replies are. Sure, let the poster's server decide which replies are accepted. Want to post something the thread starter doesn't like? make your own thread!". This approach would allow some meaningful technical simplification in the distributed case I think

@mcc @cwebber hmm, isn't that basically how mastodons fetching of post context works?

@4censord @cwebber if so, control over it is not exposed to the user (except i guess in single-user server contexts?)

@mcc @cwebber i'm not actually certain if the post context endpoints respect the posters blocks
if it does, at least for anything that didn't federate directly to my instance, if you had blocked them i'd never see their reply under your post

Sebastian Crane 🏳️‍⚧️2d ago

@cwebber So the purpose of this would be to allow people with static websites to easily embed an ActivityPub-compatible comment section into their posts; is that right?

Christine Lemmer-Webber 2d ago

@seabass And also allow others to subscribe to them and view their content on their fedi instance

Sebastian Crane 🏳️‍⚧️2d ago

@cwebber It's a very neat idea. You are, however, very like to have nerd-sniped enough of the programming corners of the Fediverse that there will very soon be ten competing daemons, though ;)

@cwebber So kinda like https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy/110781413323024163, but less manual? (If I understand correctly, to use @davidrevoy's system, one has to manually create a mastodon post for each blog post.)

David Revoy (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image I may have found an alternative solution to my blog's commenting system! 😺 The synchronization of comments from my Mastodon account. It's something I tried and abandoned, but I'm giving it another try after reading your comments. Well, I explain more on the blog and also share the source code: Blog post, source code, and demo: → https://www.davidrevoy.com/article981/i-may-have-found-an-alternative-solution-to-my-blogs-comment-system Bonus: Because I'm happy, here's a happy Mastodon mascot as a postman that I painted this morning. #blog #selfhosting #php

Framapiaf

PuercoPop 2d ago

@cwebber I built something similar, scrapping YouTube channels and posting them to mastodon (sorry #Fediverse I prioritized building something that worked over implementing a server+actor). My goal was to generate more #Peru-specific content to make the fediverse more appealing to people from my country.

https://git.sr.ht/~puercopop/yt2m

PuercoPop 2d ago

@cwebber In practice I haven't found it to generate much engagement. There are some improvements I could make, like scraping hashtags from the title to include them and determine an posting frequency using Little's law. But upon reflection I enjoy the fediverse because of organic content, not bots. Now I think that local servers hosted in Spanish by default + IRL awareness campaigns might be a better way to drive adopting

Martin Schlegel 2d ago

@PuercoPop @cwebber te lo agradezco, necesitamos mas esfuerzo para hacer al fediverso conocido y útil en #Peru

Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦2d ago

@cwebber I want to do something like this. Steps 2 and 4 are the ones I haven't investigated yet.

Profane tmesis 2d ago

@cwebber Those first two sound a lot like @birb

I don't know how easy it is to self-host and it doesn't do comments yet, I think. All the replies are under the birb's post though, so you're almost there already...

Zack Weinberg 2d ago

@cwebber if this existed I would use it

Evert Pot 2d ago

@cwebber I pitched this exact thing a few years ago when they were funding fediverse/mastodon adjacent projects but sadly didn't make the cut! Still seems like a fun thing to build

technomancy 2d ago

@cwebber https://fedibot.club is kinda close to this except not really designed for self-hosting (tho you could easily do that, it's meant for not-very-technical end users who couldn't operate their own server)

I originally built it for feed-republishing bots like @ofs

https://fedibot.club/bots/bsuuueftxygvbtys

fedibot club

AndiS 🌞🍷🇪🇺2d ago

I'm sure most parts of this have been built many times by many persons (and probably AI bots too)

Everyone who wants to show a Fediverse feed on a Hugo page has to do something along that lines (other Static Site Generators do exist)

I know I have probably all described parts somewhere on my harddrive in a more or less usable but not interconnecting state and I am not even a "real" developer 😉

I agree, this would be cool and not even too hard. Who can spend some time? pretty please?

AndiS 🌞🍷🇪🇺2d ago

Yes, this could be the comment Part, although I'd do it without Javascript by using a server side script that generates static Sources for Hugo.

But anyway, the pieces are there,

CC: @[email protected]

gábor ugray 2d ago

@cwebber @b0rk I like the part where the tool catches replies and posts them as comments under the originating post!

I am maybe a little less optimisic about the feasibility for many folks to self-host it.

@cwebber
Most of it is done, I haven't finished the ActivityPub and I'd scaled this back to just my entertainment. May see about bringing some of the old features back: https://posthole.net/

The PostHole -- Morning Edition

Households could get free electricity for doing washing on sunny weekends. Grand National horse trainer jailed for beating man with hockey stick. Oil prices ease on hopes of new US-Iran peace talks

The PostHole

This exists now as @posthole and on the web as social.posthole.net and posthole.net. Haven't added any user features yet, just getting feel for core requirements.

OK, I think this meets the goal:
https://social.posthole.net

and https://posthole.net

converging at @posthole

Posting every 3 hours or so. I haven't tested the user interaction bit yet.

Social -- The PostHole

The PostHole on the Fediverse. Edition announcements, article threads, and reader responses.

@cwebber @posthole

Gave the site a huge overhaul, almost looks professional now.

Testing interaction across Mastodon to add to a social section of the PostHole.net site.

Lorem Gibson:
paranoid footage faded construct sunglasses nano- hacker systema boy vinyl wristwatch vinyl. tattoo carbon skyscraper geodesic render-farm geodesic skyscraper gang man narrative artisanal drone. vinyl corrupted saturation point tattoo shoes corrupted cardboard meta- claymore mine construct apophenia office. marketing bridge cardboard Shibuya silent Kowloon sprawl boy alcohol market tower warehouse. courier skyscraper futurity smart- DIY nodality monofilament fetishism soul-delay cyber- Shibuya sign.

@cwebber isn't that what https://feedsin.space/ does/is?

I have set it up for my site (see https://feedsin.space/feed/die-welt.net) but without the reply aggregation it's not as useful as I hoped it'd be for me as the author.

feedsin.space

A service to load RSS feeds into the Fediverse

@cwebber xoro.social isn't made to do only that, but because it does ActivityPub and RSS, it just kind of _happens_ to do what you describe, more or less

@cwebber I wrote this little guy a while back, not sure if it fits your description: https://kod.ujo.moe/jadedctrl/sfeed_mastodon

Testante homecon! — Robot-check!

Rusty Shackleford 1d ago

@jadedctrl
@cwebber

On one hand, love that we can build curated feeds like this.

On the other, it can turn into nothing more than bridging personal news feeds into the fedi, generating redundant noise. I’d likely unfollow someone autoposting everything from their RSS. Just depends on source & how selective.

Logically, makes sense. But if everyone did it indiscriminately, the network would get messy, & the 'subscribe to everything' model starts to seem more like a firehose than a conversation.

Rusty Shackleford 1d ago

@jadedctrl
@cwebber

For example: imagine a Mastodon instance that bridges a climate research blog feed. If every single paper gets autoposted, it can flood timelines. But if it only republishes key findings with researcher summaries, it sparks actual discussion.

Signal vs. noise.

Rusty Shackleford 1d ago

@jadedctrl
@cwebber

I think I misconstrued things *rubs temples

I need more sleep

kartoffelsaft 2d ago

@cwebber
As for that optional suggestion, there's this:

https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-static-blog-with-mastodon/

I use it for my own blog (but I'm not popular enough to know what the moderation story looks like, fortunately or unfortunately).

Adding comments to your static blog with Mastodon

Update 29.01.2023: Adapted the code to work with Mastodon 4.0 and replaced linuxrocks.online by floss.social Update 15.03.2023: Thanks to @[email protected], this code now handles replies in a lot nicer way. You might want check out her solution too. Update 07.07.2023: Thanks to @[email protected], the layout was improved and this now handle emojis One of the biggest disadvantages of static site generators is that they are static and can’t include comments.

Carl Schwan

A.B. Murrow 2d ago

@cwebber I would use this in a heartbeat

Wesley Moore 2d ago

@cwebber I made something like this for @linkedlist, it's what posts to that account. I called it FeedParrot. I wanted to polish it a bit more before publishing the code, but moved on to other things. It's a single Rust binary to deploy... Maybe I should just make it public.

Wesley Moore 2d ago

@cwebber there we go. README was written a while ago and may be somewhat aspirational. https://github.com/wezm/feed-parrot

GitHub - wezm/feed-parrot

Contribute to wezm/feed-parrot development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

John-Mark Gurney 2d ago

@cwebber
I'll second that. I'd like the software to be able to take stars/likes from an account as approval for posting the reply to the post.

Definitely would use software if the deps were small enough.

Fairness4All 2d ago

@cwebber I haven't audited the source code yet but I've seen some accounts using mastofeed

https://mastofeed.org/ https://github.com/kergozh/mastofeed

MastoFeed - Send your RSS Feeds to Mastodon

Automated and super easy tool to send the content from your RSS Feeds to any Mastodon instance. We do it all for you

MastoFeed.org

Jeroen Wiert Pluimers 1d ago

@closeted_unionist @cwebber combine that with https://mastofeed.com and some of the interaction features https://social.arnaus.net/@feeder has (see https://xavier.arnaus.net/blog/masto-feed-a-personal-rss-reader-as-a-mastodon-account-companion on the commands it understand) would be a cool idea.

Blog post with more links queued for about half a year from now at https://wiert.wordpress.com/?p=195821

Mastofeed - embeddable Mastodon feeds

Gert V 🇵🇸2d ago

@cwebber Amazing thread. On some sites one now has to use lynx -source to get their RSS feed in order to handle all the cookie challenges. Easy but still..

Jens Finkhäuser 2d ago

@cwebber Like... https://codeberg.org/jfinkhaeuser/pushmi-pullyu ?

Ok, it's not a *daemon*, but works as a cronjob.

pushmi-pullyu

pushmi-pullyu is a little project that pulls data from source(s) and pushes them elsewhere. Used primarily for ingesting RSS and outputting other stuff.

Codeberg.org

Saupreiss #Präparat500 🗽1d ago

…Systemd-Timer…

(Burn, Fedi, Burn… 🔥)

Jens Finkhäuser 1d ago

@Saupreiss As much as I loathe systemd, I will not rise to the flame bait.

/me inhales... holds... exhales...

Kevin Karhan 1d ago

@cwebber +9001%

@cwebber I would also add a list of public instances in codeberg, webpage and the account creation screen (with the hyperlink of each of them to check their timelines and moderation rules), a standardized video player to see PeerTube and Mastodon videos, for example, with the same interface, and maybe an app both in regular stores and F-Droid, 'cause people go to the stores almost by default to find this stuff, at least in my surroundings

Elena ``of Valhalla''1d ago

@cwebber I'm using friendica which does more or less that (among a thousand other features, of course), and I can confirm it's something that would be really useful

especially if it was something easy to package for distributions, and thus easy to run in a sensible and low effort way