Any computer program can be designed to run from a single file if you architect it wrong enough! I wanted to create the simplest possible Fediverse server which can be used as an educational tool to show how ActivityPub / Mastodon works. The design goals were: Upload a single PHP file to the server. No databases or separate config files. Single Actor (i.e. not multi-user). Allow the Actor to…
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We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some don't use English letters at all!!! A decade ago, I was miffed that GitHub only…
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I've written an ActivityPub server which only allows you to post messages to your followers. That's all it does. It won't record favourites or reposts. There's no support for following other accounts or receiving replies. It cannot delete or update posts nor can it verify signatures. It doesn't have a database or any storage beyond flat files. But it will happily send messages and allow…
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I remember seeing the original "A new decentralized microblogging platform" on HackerNews back in October 2016. A few weeks later, I joined - becoming the 7,112th user. As the years went on, my use of it waxed and waned. I started cross-posting to both Mastodon and Twitter. Gradually, I started spending more time on the Fediverse. Once Elon shat the bed on Twitter, I moved over completely. And, …
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I've responsibly disclosed a small security issue with Mastodon (GHSA-8982-p7pm-7mqw). It allows a sufficiently determined attacker to use any Mastodon instance to redirect unwary users to a malicious site. What do you think happens if you visit: https://mastodon.social/@PasswordReset/111285045683598517/admin? If you aren't logged in to that instance, it will redirect you to a 3rd party site.…
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I wrote a moderately popular post on Mastodon. Lots of people shared it. Is it possible to find out how many different ActivityPub servers it went to? Yes! As we all know, the Fediverse is one big chain mail. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. When I write a post, it appears on my server (called an "instance" in Mastodon-speak). Everyone on my instance can see my post. My instance looks …
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You can now have this blog federated to your social media site by following @blog@shkspr.mobi If you're on Mastodon, it should look something like this: You should be able to follow it on Lemmy, kBin, PixelFed, and some cool social network I've never heard of. How This blog runs on WordPress. Thanks to the tireless work of Matthias Pfefferle, there's now an official WordPress ActivityPub…
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The latest version of Mastodon includes search functionality. It's early days, but seems to work pretty well. Here are some of the interesting things I found when using it. Search is complex - expectations I don't mean the act of searching a database - that's routine - but I mean it is socially complex. Lots of people left Twitter because it was too easy to search for them. For example, if…
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One of the many great things about the Fediverse (Mastodon, PixelFed, Lemmy, etc) is that your account is portable. Let's say you're bob@social.boring and, one day, you decide to move your account to foxyfun@furryextreme.yif. Well, with a few clicks of a button, all of your old followers are now following your brand new account. You're still following all your old friends. The accounts you…
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Last week, this strange mention appeared on my Mastodon feed. After a bit of clicking around, I figured out what had happened. A user on the Kbin social network had linked to my Mastodon profile. Thanks to the magic of the ActivityPub protocol, it filtered into my mentions - even though I've never even heard of Kbin. That's pretty cool! A user on one social network can mention a user on a…
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Twitter's decision to hobble its API has meant that a number of useful alerting bots might no longer function. Your local subway might not be able to Tweet each morning about delays on the line, nor will a tornado warning be displayed as you scroll through photos of brunch, and forget about flood alerts between your memes. In one sense, this is sad. A set of useful public services are being cut…
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I'm a big fan of Untappd. It's a social drinking app which lets you check in to a beer and rate it. Look, we all need hobbies, mine is drinking cider. You can see a list of everything I've drunk over the 13 last years. Nearly 900 different pints! After checking in, the app automatically posts to Twitter. But who wants to prop up Alan's failing empire? Not me! So here's some quick code to…
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