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We Distribute
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We Distribute is a news site reporting on the future of the Internet. We cover the Fediverse, Bluesky, Nostr, and more. We keep a pulse on the development of these spaces, and the people living in them.

While there's something to be said about the value of converging on existing efforts, shoring up support, and strengthening existing communities, each project brings different things to the table that are valuable.

Sometimes, these things only get as far as being experiments. nostr:nprofile1qqs8d3c64cayj8canmky0jap0c3fekjpzwsthdhx4cthd4my8c5u47spzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43z7qg5waehxw309aex2mrp0yhxgctdw4eju6t0qy3hwumn8ghj7urjdau8jtt90pcx2unfd4jkuapwdah8yetwv3jhytnrdaks0duay6 mentioned to us in an interview that he has a list of like 90 different protocols / projects. The nature of decenteralized communication is itself decenteralized.

We're in the process of writing a big article that compares the strengths and weaknesses of ActivityPub, Nostr, and AT Proto, and are convinced that each comes with ideas the others should consider.

The author of "Protocols, Not Platforms", Techdirt's Mike Masnick, has joined the #Bluesky board of directors. His goal is to help the organization stay true to their original vision.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/08/mike-masnick-joins-bluesky/

The #MastodonForHarris campaign has raised close to $500,000 within two weeks of being live. It is probably the largest attempt for political organizing on the #Fediverse, and may provide a playbook for other efforts going forward.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/08/mastodon-for-harris/

We posted our very first Progress Report on OpenCollective today, that catches up with what we've been doing the past few months.

We have some big ideas, and talk about where our publication is going.

https://opencollective.com/wedistribute/updates/progress-report-july-2024

NeoDB is a review system with some remarkable tricks up its sleeve, and may provide a way forward for decentralized content discovery.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/neodb-review-culture/

Come hang out with us on our #Matrix space! We have a really chill and friendly community of users, designers, builders, and writers who are deeply invested in helping the #Fediverse and the wider #SocialWeb succeed.

https://matrix.to/#/#wedistribute:matrix.org

Some people think that privacy, openness, and user consent are all at odds with one another. Here's a guide on how to navigate all three as a developer.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/fediverse-privacy-and-consent/

The development team behind ActivityPods released a new example app that's easy to get up and running, to help developers hit the ground running.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/activitypods-example-app/

A beloved Lemmy event returns this year, and it's already off to a strong start! There's still plenty of time to participate.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/canvas-2024-live/

In this guide, we go over tips and tricks for dealing with one of PeerTube's biggest headaches: fixing broken videos.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/fixing-peertube-videos/

Nice! Openvibe now supports Bluesky in addition to Nostr and the Mastodon API! 🥳

https://openvibe.social/

This looks amazing! So many people focus on recreating existing services, when the trick is to let users pick and choose what form factors they actually want. nostr:note1p5s7kgh6jhq2zfpchdf4mwty3cf4fvgkqvtk35s408w464g4gzesyx2vdq

Huh, neat! The Mastodon API support in @openvibe now works with our #Akkoma instance. We can now post to ActivityPub and Nostr at the same time.

We apologize for the lack of updates. Our Chief Editor, nostr:nprofile1qqs0k30estfycmw64mgp9c5vy52t5us85zxdwwx49cn6tmmgyan8jqqpzemhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejz7qgmwaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxummnw3e8qmr9vfejucm0d5hsz9thwden5te0dehhxarj9ehhsarj9ejx2a3048vxfe, has been recovering from burnout for the past few weeks, and hasn't been able to get anything published. He's recovering, and continuing to work on new pieces.

We have a ton of great articles being written, and hope to return to our regular schedule very soon!

Replying to Avatar rabble

What do people think of this? nostr:note13k0wh965nntau3jdx8d3ls96uus2zk778z4w6dyg9r8ptt94e6hsj94y3r It seems that Mastodon is designed to share user posts, including private DMs, with anyone who asks for them. Someone with an AI background pulled in a bunch of posts and analyzed them, including labeling the content.

These folks, Maven, followed the ActivityPub spec and the terms of service. They downloaded publicly accessible data using Mastodon servers and services as designed. They then analyzed that data and ran an algorithm to add labels, similar to how every fediverse server does. The difference here is that Maven used machine learning to add some labels, whereas others add labels such as timestamps when the local server downloads the data without using newer machine learning tech.

Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Google also do this; they crawl the fediverse, use AI and machine learning to label content, and display it in different contexts.

The tags that Maven adds are pretty innocent. They are just adding hashtag-like labels for discoverability.

Furthermore, many people are upset that Maven is leaking people's DMs. This is like living in a house where you refuse to have a front door or curtains on your windows and then getting very upset when somebody wanders in and sits down in your living room or looks in from across the street. The fediverse, by design, has no privacy. DMs are public! It says right there in Mastodon that these aren’t private. Nor are Bluesky's DMs, by the way. There is no end-to-end encryption in the fediverse yet. Evan Prodromou is actually working on this, likely adapting the MLS standard, which is great but doesn’t exist yet.

So my question is this: Why does the fediverse rely on unwritten and undocumented norms that are not mentioned in either the specs or terms of service? And why are people constantly surprised when others don't follow these hidden social conventions?

Regarding the Private DM's, we had to issue a retraction. Fediverse clients only started adopting federated edits relatively recently. Prior to that, people relied on "Delete & Redraft", which attempts to send a delete that may or may not go through, and hand the user the content for editing.

In this case, the DM was actually a Public post that accidentally had the wrong scope applied. The time and content matched up perfectly, and the delete request did not correctly remove the content from mastodon.social's cache. When Maven ingested posts, they did so from a public firehose endpoint for that server, rather than use federation as intended.

Today, we're sitting down to interview nostr:npub1wmr34t36fy03m8hvgl96zl3znndyzyaqhwmwdtshwmtkg03fetaqhjg240 for the #Decentered podcast! We're really excited to talk about #Nostr, his experience with building Nos and Planetary, and learn more about his personal story and vision for what is being built here and now.

Due to new info by the admin involved, we are formally issuing a retraction.

Maven did not, in fact, leak Private Mentions and make them public. What was mirrored ended up being a cached copy of a public post that was sent in error, then deleted under the infamous "Delete and Redraft" function.

The article has been updated to reflect this, front and center.