@[email protected] signed up, waiting for approval

I'm signed up!

@[email protected] I wrote this article some time ago, but unfortunately, there's a lack of useful resources for bringing the fediverse into schools.

https://www.agendadigitale.eu/scuola-digitale/il-fediverso-a-scuola-uno-strumento-didattico-per-la-cittadinanza-digitale/

[email protected]

@[email protected] said in I know this is already on Mastodon team's radar, but I do want to stress how important this feature is.:

The post visibility, from what I understand, also makes it harder to report such attacks.

I can assure you that on Mastodon, if a user flags a direct message, I'm perfectly capable of seeing it, regardless of its visibility level. Unfortunately, not on Friendica. I don't know about Lemmy and NodeBB yet.

As for the rest, I'm sure I'm probably underestimating the problem of racism; my concerns are Italian-speaking, and in the Italian fediverse, racist people are immediately identified and isolated. In fact, most of the reports I've received for racism were for English-language content, and this is indicative, because English-language content makes up the minority of the reports I receive.

However, I still don't understand why limiting the ability to reply constitutes a real limitation on harassment, when there's already the option (standardized in Activitypub) to limit the visibility of posts to followers only.

Paradoxically, the inability to reply to a public post (because I think we're talking about public posts) actually increases the risk of that post being copied, linked, and screenshotted for ridicule on different, more toxic platforms outside the control of the fediverse communities (X, Thruth, 4chan, etc.).

@[email protected] I'm the administrator of four Italian instances based on four different systems, and I don't see racism and mansplaining as urgent matters: the reports I received about racist posts came from junk instances I hadn't yet included in my block list, or from newly created users created for the purpose of trolling or harassing. I quickly banned the unmoderated instances or the harassing users, and the attacks on those victims have stopped.

Regarding mansplaining, I've never received any reports, although I've had to intervene on some sexist posts (and in those cases, I didn't even need to use the moderation tools; simply explaining that certain messages were offensive was enough to get the author to edit or delete them).

In short, do you really think we need more than just moderation to solve this problem, considering that in cases of targeted and repeated harassment, it's always possible to use the feature that allows you to make your posts visible only to your followers?

Finally, I find the possibility of allowing replies only to certain users:

• unbearable, because it would distort Mastodon's core feature, the idea of ​​"interaction by default."
• it would stimulate those toxic profiles who want to post without cross-examination, a phenomenon that on X/Twitter has reached unbearable heights of arrogance on the part of certain second-tier tweetstars.
• it would be harmful, because it is not an Activitypub standard and would further confuse the situation (exactly as happened with Mastodon's absurd way of handling quotes).
• furthermore, since it is not an Activitypub standard, it would be supported by none of the other social software in the Fediverse, from Friendica to Misskey, from Pleroma to Pixelfed: these software would continue to publish replies to victims of harassment, who would continue to find a wall of harassment written under their posts, visible from all other platforms and without even the possibility of reporting them (exactly as is happening in the case of post with quote)

@[email protected] The Lemmy developers have added a user profile field where you can enter a Matrix account. It would certainly be better to also add a link to XMPP, and I believe this would be the most viable way to immediately achieve secure communication in the Fediverse.

However, it's always helpful for someone to try to "reinvent the wheel": diversity is a very prolific mother of solutions to problems that don't yet exist.

@julian said in New Fediverse features that actually aren't new:

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

No one familiar with the Fediverse can ignore it! In my opinion, NodeBB represents the most complete implementation of Activitypub groups today, adding the ergonomics of Lemmy and the versatility of Kbin to the great flexibility of Friendica!

NodeBB forum categories function as excellent Activitypub groups, perfectly compatible for Mastodon users.

Unfortunately, while users Lemmy/Piefed, Mbin, and Friendica can easily view NodeBB groups, Mastodon users lack a valid interface for managing groups, and almost no one is familiar with the Raccoon app, which is the only app that can recognize Activitypub groups and group discussions by topic.

For me, NodeBB was the best surprise in the Fediverse of this amazing 2025, and I thank the entire development team again for this wonderful gift!

@[email protected] You've touched on a very interesting point. By the way, I've never figured out whether your Flipboard account will ever be able to see my reply, and to be honest, I'd be very curious to know what a Flipboard user sees when they receive a reply from the free Fediverse...

Returning to your observation, I see the Fediverse as an integrated ecosystem, but integration doesn't always have to be symmetrical.

To put it simply, Bookwyrm users and Peertube users aren't interested in viewing content from other social networks!
In the Fediverse, there are programs that focus on one of the three areas in the image above, and programs that occupy two or more reference areas.

For example, I find the fact that Mobilizon users can't see Friendica events much more problematic than the shortcoming you noted on Pixelfed...

Pixelfed certainly "looks" like a social network, but it's primarily a place where users share their "personal art galleries."

While I'm not a fan of @[email protected], I recognize that he's making great strides to increase the interoperability of his creation, and Pixelfed has grown better than any other software in the Fediverse on three key levels:

I'm sure he'll find a way to make text content visible in the future, but honestly, right now, it doesn't seem like a priority for Pixelfed's development and success.

That said, your observations are a very interesting starting point for the development of software and interfaces in the Fediverse.

Your analysis is very accurate and objectively correct.. However, there is an analogy that is not entirely relevant.

@[email protected] said in I also want to see #activitypub get some of the primitives that #atproto has such as decentralized identifiers (except for real), personal data stores, content addresses, etc.:

Bluesky's role in the ATmosphere is somewhat analogous to Mastodon's in the Fediverse back in 2022: it's the biggest and best-known app, and gets almost all the press, but isn't the main source of innovation.

In fact, 2022 doesn't correspond so precisely with the year 2025 for Bluesky.
Mastodon was six years old in 2022, and in those six years it gained its leadership by competing with equally structured or even much more structured alternative platforms like diaspora*, Friendica, Misskey, and, more recently, Lemmy, who proposed a different interaction model.
Throughout that period, Mastodon was never considered a leader by its "competitors," and often not even a point of reference.
This led to an evolution of the Fediverse ecosystem that was much more influenced by natural selection, and thanks to this natural selection and also thanks to the many dead branches, there is so much diversity.

I'm fairly certain that this diversity is the fundamental asset of the Fediverse, and that this asset will hardly ever be possessed by the Bluesky ecosystem.

My approach to these issues is probably unfiltered, and I'm sorry if this makes my statements seem too categorical.

I should also point out that when I talk about Bluesky being tied to huge funding (and therefore adequate returns), I'm not expressing a moral judgment. I want to be completely non-partisan on the matter.

I simply wanted to provide my best explanation for the disruptions we're witnessing as a result of attempts at cross-pollination between the Blueskysphere and the Fedisphere.

Let me try to explain myself better:

• considering the vertical nature of Bluesky PBC
• considering the horizontal nature of the Fediverse
  I don't rule out the possibility of cross-pollination, but I do rule out the possibility of it being guided by the same principles.

The development of the Fediverse is, in fact, driven by the community of developers who work only on the application layer and know that (almost) none of them has the power to decide on the "protocol." And it isn't based on a single business model. On the other hand, those who have decision-making power over the protocol know that any change would have a huge impact on an extremely diverse ecosystem. It's not easy to decide what to change because it's not easy to understand what impact such a change could have.
Bluesky's development, on the other hand, revolves around a single entity that holds decision-making power over the protocol, running the server and developing the app and APIs that dominate that ecosystem. And it's based on a business model that was already defined well before the protocol was created, with a protocol that was also developed with a business model in mind!

The developers of the Fediverse were therefore Darwinianly selected by circumstances and today appear to be a bit more hacker-like, a bit more experimental, more adept at circumventing limitations, and (this isn't always a good thing...) more oriented toward community-driven financial support (and self-driven, because luckily for them, they all have IT jobs in a company). Moreover, not everyone is highly knowledgeable about the Activitypub protocol. And some of them are real "gourmets" of controversy...
Bluesky developers, on the other hand, seem decidedly more "secular" to me; they also have to deal with a more rigid protocol (definitely more protocol-based than the Activitypub protocol), strong centralized decision-making power, and objectively have more limited room for manoeuvre. Furthermore, these developers' livelihood model isn't clear to me (I mean, beyond their IT jobs at some company: do they all work for Bluesky PBC?).
I don't know... they seem like two worlds that aren't easily compatible, even from a social perspective...

If this is true, then it shouldn't be surprising if the attitude of Bluesky stakeholders (the real ones, those sitting at the top) is positive only when a change could benefit their business model.
Conversely, the responses from Fediverse stakeholders (i.e., those dozen or so de facto influencers who, with a nod, can determine the public's favor or hostility toward an initiative) might seem more disappointing.

I reiterate that even if I were right, this attitude wouldn't stop the new ideas germinating between the Fediverse and Bluesky developers.
It must be said, however, that since Bluesky was launched, I haven't seen any particular innovations. Recently, however, I've seen several new ideas emerge in the Fediverse, and these ideas, despite the rapidly declining user base, have led to very promising developments in the federated ecosystem over the past two years.

All of this, however, would explain the communication difficulties between the two worlds, linked to the fact that the Bluesky leadership is too high-flying and the Fediverse stakeholders are too free-wheeling.

I hope I've explained myself better, despite the language barrier.

@julian said in I also want to see #activitypub get some of the primitives that #atproto has such as decentralized identifiers (except for real), personal data stores, content addresses, etc.:

This is an important observation we should take into consideration.

My theory, however, would explain this reaction... 

See you soon and have a good evening.