Laurens Hof / is on Nostr

I write the Fediverse Report, a news site about what is happening in the fediverse.

This is my personal account, where I share and comment on anything I find interesting.

I care about an ethical internet.

He/him. From the Netherlands 🇳🇱.

Fediverse Report: fediversereport.com
Personal website: https://laurenshof.online
Bluesky: @laurenshof.online
Matrix: @wisdomchicken:matrix.org

Last Notes

2024-07-07 14:07:34

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all the reviews can federate outwards, and comments/likes made on other fedi platforms federate inwards
it also supports connecting accounts, so i signed up with my mastodon account and it created a new neodb account which copied my masto profile. i can also get to copy my mastodon social graph, but thats a separate step from just signing up

2024-07-07 13:04:22

i simply cannot believe how good @npub1nd8…hvm7 is, and how literally everyone in the english speaking side of fedi has missed it that there is a complete review platform that is native to the fediverse
its truly one of the most unexpected experiences ive had on fedi in my time covering the space

2024-07-05 22:38:12

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yeah ghost and buttondown are also good examples. all indicate a potential shift of ap-fedi towards longform content though, which would both be really good but also probably alter the network structure quite a bit
oh and if were talking innovative and ghost: Fedify is very much worth mentioning there, activitypub reaaally needed a good server framework

2024-07-05 22:35:05

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my biggest issue when i complain about a lack of innovation in fedi is actually a frustration that innovations by the other networks do not get seen as such, nor seen as something that ap-fedi should adopt and iterate on
for both custom feeds and custom moderation did bluesky evolve from what fedi could offer, and did farcaster iterate and alter on what bluesky offers.
that contextual awareness and interest in that its something to learn from is completely missing imo

2024-07-05 22:27:29

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third party tools and clients for mastodon are permissionless, so that you see (and i agree) some cool innovation there makes sense
i see a lack of innovation in actual platforms that are product-ready. all fedi platforms are multiple years old at this point, and pretty much all bigtech platform clones.
Discourse/nodebb might bring some change tho
agreed that the innovation power in fedi comes from the esoteric shit like activitypods or stuff like Weird

2024-07-05 22:15:38

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"most of them were variations on people having their stuff moved outside of what they perceived to be the fediverse they joined? "
yes, but thats exactly what makes it not permissionless imo
permissionless open social network is what farcaster does here: offering an indexer-as-a-service that will pipe the entire freaking network directly into your own database to do whatever you want with
https://warpcast.com/rish/0x1dc1ee78

2024-07-05 21:58:35

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i think thats sort of the core of the problem:
- its not permissionless because you are not allowed to do certain things on ap-fedi, and which things are verboten is not documented
- its not permissioned, because there is no entity you can get approval from
think this conundrum explains a significant part of why fedi has been lacking in innovation imo

2024-07-05 21:35:04

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id argue that the activitypub side of the fediverse is the only open social protocol is the only one id argue is not permissionless. nostr, atproto and farcaster it definitely makes sense. But considering the amount of pushback you get on ap-fedi for going against social customs (see opt-in search for example) i dont think it feels permissionless. At least not in the way that nostr is permissionless, for example

2024-07-04 19:05:33

fediversereport now has the fediverse creator tag enabled!
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/112/729/779/807/053/268/original/64d3eaa439464a09.png

2024-07-01 18:04:08

Random observation:
#Mastodon seems to have around 2/3 of the people using web, and 1/3 mobile [1]
#Farcaster has 75% mobile, 25% web [2]
[1] official apps only, m.s. only, https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/112662023734261452
[2] https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth/0x396800fa

2024-06-30 09:27:03

I think a significant part of real-time news events that is currently still being discussed via microblogging platforms will probably move towards predication market platforms

2024-06-28 12:53:40

beautiful
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/112/694/343/691/644/473/original/1037186b532e01d5.png

2024-06-27 18:03:05

On the discourse surrounding Bluesky's starter packs:
(https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/post/3kvu5e47w4s25 for context on starter packs)
It would be great to have something similar for the fediverse as well, but I'm not sure that putting it in Mastodon the server software would be the best approach (not even considering they dont have the capacity for it anyway). Either put it in a client or non-masto-microblogging platform, as that creates competitive advantage for that project

2024-06-27 14:21:43

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Indieweb.social knows about 3.8k threads accounts. Thats ofcourse only 1 server that does not know about the entire network, but the people are there are also more likely than the fediverse in general to federate with threads. So I think its a safe guess that the total number of accounts is below 10k
https://www.threads.net/@timothyjchambers/post/C8qbNO_JkGQ

2024-06-21 11:00:21

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hell yeah rainbolt is awesome

2024-04-24 19:39:35

Testing something so here’s a photo of my cat
testv2
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/112/327/828/941/560/337/original/ea4dfa4229db720c.jpeg