gotosocial

the account directory PR is squerged and now on the main branch weeeee #GoToSocial

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/pulls/4707

Posting this again, because my server-federation broke:

I couldn't make a GoToSocial plush, so I made GoToSocial earrings instead.
Follow my making process in my latest blog post: https://ccw.icu/blog/making-custom-earrings/

#blog #writingmonth #gotosocial #earrings #diy

Today I posted a farewell message of sorts on #Facebook (feel free to plagiarize as you see fit):

"Hello, world! 👋 From now on, Mastodon is my preferred social media channel. It's an open source, decentralized platform – not controlled by tech giants. Search for me in there, to follow: @gtsadmin . I will very occasionally be checking this account, and you can trust I'll *never* be posting here - unless some extremely extenuating, unforeseen reason arises. The Facebook Marketplace, alas, is still a resource I can't *quite* close the door on, at this time (but want to). Should you see any further Facebook posts from me, sooner should you assume it's Meta impersonating me, using their new AI patent: https://cybernews.com/ai-news/digital-eternal-life-meta-patents-ai-that-can-post-after-you-die/
Please look in my Facebook profile links for other ways to contact me if necessary."

#gotosocial #Mastodon

Dear fellow or potential fellow gotosocial instance admins,
I've come up with a novel way to set up a #gotosocial server behind a reverse proxy, which avoids the use of making new firewalling rules - both on a VPS, and creating port forwarding on one's home router. This method is ideal for minimizing the cost of running one's own #ActivityPub/#Mastodon server, in a way that leverages inexpensive fast storage on the backend (say, on a #RaspberryPi 5, 2GB of RAM, with an NVMe). As many valiant and praiseworthy Mastodon server admins might attest to, renting cloud VPS' can cost a lot, especially when storing many tens or hundreds of GB of user data.

My method avoids the need of forwarding ports 443 and 80 into one's home LAN, using DNAT (on the VPS) and port forwarding (on one's home router). In a nutshell, it's a novel use of #Wireguard, in conjunction with #nginx on the frontend, and gotosocial on the backend. This can save the cost of renting a dedicated VPS, to get the exclusive use of ports 443 and 80, in conjunction with static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. My method optimizes on reliability and cheapness, but it's not the most secure - decryption and re-encryption happens on the VPS, before the data travels down the Wireguard tunnel. This exposes the data to any underlying hypervisor at one's hosting company. So full disclosure there.

I've run my method by the helpful gotosocial furries in their #Matrix Help chatroom (and I'm grateful for their help to debug subtle warts the method had), and got their blessing, at least to the technical soundness of the method.

I have a testing instance of gotosocial 0.21.0 set up with this new method: https://g.toque.im

I'm the user @owl on that instance, should you wish to befriend me there.

I'll make a longer blog post on this in the days to come, and post it in a reply to this post. (I also cross-posted this on another account of mine, please forgive the duplicate: @gtsadmin )

#DevOps #Linux #infosec #SelfHosting #DataSovereignty #OpenSource

Push Notifications and MastoBlaster

On iOS, push notifications must go through Apple’s servers. This is not something that can be bypassed, as it is part of the operating system’s architecture.

MastoBlaster, like other Fediverse apps, uses a design that maximizes user privacy.

When you log in to your instance, the app and the server exchange the necessary cryptographic keys. The app also communicates to the instance the address of the relay, which is the server responsible for forwarding notifications to Apple.

When a new notification is generated:

1. Your instance encrypts the notification.
2. It sends the encrypted payload to the relay.
3. The relay forwards it to Apple using its own authentication key.
4. Apple delivers it to your device.

The content of the notification is encrypted by your Fediverse server and can only be decrypted by your device.

The relay, which in the case of MastoBlaster is dedicated and hosted on a FreeBSD server, receives only encrypted data. It cannot read the content, does not know which account the notification belongs to, and does not store any information about the notification itself.

Apple knows which relay sent the notification and which device it must be delivered to, but it cannot access the content.

In short, only your instance and your device can read the notification.

#MastoBlaster #Fediverse #Mastodon #GoToSocial #Akkoma #iOS #Apple #PushNotifications #FreeBSD

we're gonna introduce the "I don't want to see or be seen by straight people" feature to #GoToSocial

shipping soon! 🚀 ✨

/April fools joke

It takes aaaaaaaaaaages to compile #GoToSocial for #OpenBSD on a #Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W... but it's a good stableness benchmark. So far, it has not hanged - now that I use another Ethernet Hat and POE adapter.

Hello everyone, version 0.21.0 of #GoToSocial, aka Sacrilegious Sloth, has emerged from the release candidate process, ready to serve your nasty blasphemous posting needs 🥰

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.21.0

Please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version! There are database migrations and config file changes to be aware of.

Here are the release highlights:

Domain Limits: You can now create domain limits in the admin section of the settings panel, in order to do things like limit + mute all accounts on a domain (except ones you follow), add content warnings to posts from limited domains, mark media as sensitive (or don't download it at all).
Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/admin/domain_limits/
Indexable support: You can now mark your account as "indexable" by full-text search, in the settings panel. This will federate your preference to other servers, so that servers with full-text search functionality can include your posts in search results.
Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#mark-accounts-posts-as-full-text-indexable
Show reblogs on the web view of your profile (opt-in): A new setting in the settings panel allows you to opt-in to showing posts that you've boosted/reblogged on the web view of your profile. The default setting retains existing behavior (don't show boosts on the web view).
Documented here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/user_guide/settings/#include-boosts-on-the-web-view-of-your-profile
Better caching behavior for timelines. The number of database calls when browsing local + public timelines and lists should be significantly reduced.
Store + show reason for undownloaded media: When media fails to be downloaded from a remote instance, the reason why will be shown next to the post.
Include canQuote property on outgoing posts: Currently, this is always set to author-only, but it paves the way (and signals intent) for GtS to implement quote toots at some point.
Much improved OpenGraph previews: Whitespace is now preserved in OpenGraph previews, and media + formatting was rejigged, so linking to GoToSocial posts should result in much better OpenGraph-generated preview cards.
Expand/collapse all spoilers button on web view of threads: when viewing threads in the web view, you can now expand/collapse all spoilers at the click of a button.
S3 Object Info Caching: you can now configure cache.s3-object-info in order to mitigate expensive S3 info calls when doing nightly media cleanup.
Preserve significant whitespaces in incoming + outgoing posts: previously we were squashing a lot of whitespace together, which meant that, for example, indentation could get lost on posts federated into a GoToSocial instance. This is now fixed, so you can post poetry and whatnot without worrying about it looking like hot crap.
Millions of fucking bugfixes: we squashed a lot of them!

#FediBlock @JohnBennen@mastodon.social for 🎣

You gotta love #phishing attempts targeting a self-hosted #GoToSocial account that start with "Dear Mastodon user..." 😂 (it was addressed to my @aseachange.com account)

Dear Fedi friends stay safe and beware of messages like this one...

Edit / update: the account has already been suspended 🥳

#safety

New version of #SmolFedi, a lightweight, no-JavaScript Fediverse client written in PHP. It respects #smolweb specs.

It works fine with all basic browser such as #netsurf So you can access Fediverse on #retro computer have a basic browser (need cookies feature).

You can install it on a simple web server with php8.x / pdo_sqlite / php_curl

https://codeberg.org/adele/smolfedi

Test it on https://smolfedi.pollux.casa/ and log to all your fediverse instances (tested on #gotosocial and #mastodon). You can connect to multiple account and switch between them easily.

#smallweb #fediverse

A very warm welcome to those that were on #MedMastodon that have made the jump over here to #FediMedi (Yes, you can tell I had such a creative naming scheme when I launched the new site).

We're running #GoToSocial which is new for me and has been a really good learning activity in itself, I'm still getting used to how everything works.

The instance (As far as I can see!) should allow folks to request accounts here which will allow me to make sure we aren't rapidly flooded by spam, the same restrictions we have on our two other Mastodon servers.

We're rocking a 2000 character limit at the moment.

I won't be super active in posting from this account, it's primarily a way for me to manage and administer the instance, you can follow @wild1145 for my general day to day ramblings!

fun #fedicat feature, adding syntax highlighting (provided by the Textual renderer) for #gotosocial code blocks that specify a language

@lfa pointed me to #snac2 and asked me about #gotosocial ressource usage. This morning I'm seeing:

RAM
#snac2 34Mb
#gotosocial 251Mb (plus redis 17Mb)

Note that my snac2 instance is connected to a relay, whereas gotosocial doesn't yet have this capacity. Both snac2 and gotosocial have bugs (hey it's software). However snac2 doesn't require a database, redis, or javascript.

Snac2 is best used with it's built-in web interface. Gotosocial is only used with external clients as it doesn't have a built-in interface.

Gotosocial seems to have more of a media following, whereas Snac2 is quieter but favoured on small or single user instances.

Both Snac2 and Gotosocial can be used as blogs. Both accept a subset of Markdown. Gotosocial's default character limit is 5000 characters but can be adjusted, snac2's default is 100 000 characters thus doesn't need adjusting.

Snac2 when used behind an #Nginx reverse proxy can be refined for media caching.
https://it-notes.dragas.net/categories/snac2/

Overall I'm leaning towards snac2 for my own useage. It does however need work on external client access: editing posts and Markdown are still flaky with external clients.

I sincerely love you weirdos. <3

#Fediverse #Mastodon #GoToSocial #snac #snac2 #honk #meme #AVIF

This #GoToSocial instance has been migrated from #OpenBSD 7.8/arm64 to OpenBSD 7.9/amd64/bhyve.

➡️ ➡️ ➡️ ➡️ 🙌

If you can read this, I didn’t mess up 😅

Nothing wrong with running it on the ODROID, I just wanted it back to a DC.

Soon I will set up my own #gotosocial instance. Not to move/migrate my account for the foreseeable future. It will be more a sandbox to collect experiences and to find out if I can manage the updates, maintenance and other admin tasks. Here’s my dilemma. What’s a good name for the subdomain? Help me decide! (my current mastodon instance lives at social.wildeboer.net, managed by @mastohost )

It's cool that with #GoToSocial you don't have to deal with a web UI or anything. It makes setup and maintenance so much simpler. You can choose your own client. I'm using a self-hosted private instance of Elk, accessible on my Tailnet. I've also been using Tokodon on KDE Plasma.

GoToSocial's default 5000 character limit is what every Fediverse instance should aspire to, IMO.

can anyone comment on how good, or not good, search (for posts) is between self-hosted fedi platform apps good for single-user servers, such as #Snac2, #Mitra, #GoToSocial, #Bonfire, etc?

I am looking for search which is actually usable by someone who wishes to find things and perhaps sort what's found, unlike that provided by e.g. Mastodon, Akkoma, etc.

Since ​@evan@cosocial.ca seems unable (or unwilling) to understand that many users desire the #FediVerse to be a place where opt-in is the normal and expected implementation for features such as #relays I propose that #fedidevelopers take up this call.

The problem: the implementation of relays lacks sufficient user-based controls. While users may (at least on platforms such as GotoSocial) add relays they desire to have their content sent to, there are no user based controls over relays configured at the instance level.

The current implementation appears to have unintended, and unconsidered consequences associated with it.

Ban evasion can likely be achieved through chaining relays together. We have already seen the unintended consequence of a relay following tags.pub leading to content being relayed non-consensually.

Something that has not been considered is potential damages to users in regions where political, social, or religious beliefs are sensitive topics need to maintain tight controls over where their content is sent. This is a case where the handling and relaying of posts needs to be 100 percent bulletproof.

The Solution: all platforms in the Fediverse should implement instance level relays in the following manner:

Instance level relays are disabled for all users on that instance.
User settings provide a list of the relays provided at the instance level.

Users can opt to leave the relay(s) disabled, or
They can choose to enable the relays they trust their content being sent to.

Through this implementation we avoid clunky workarounds like adding hashtags to profiles. Also, we make this feature more discoverable for new users who are unfamiliar with the conventions of the FediVerse.

I am unfamiliar with the #FEP submission process and requirements. Anyone willing to work with me on this, I would like to see this brought forth as a FEP.

#fedideveloperverse #fedideveloper #mastodon #gotosocial #misskeyworld #misskey #pixelfed #microdotblog #pleroma #sharkeydev
@alice @admin @gotosocial @Gargron

Hello #GoToSocial enjoyers, after a very fruitful release candidate process (thanks everyone!), we've just released the proper version of GoToSocial 0.22.0,  aka Shrubby Sloth 🌿:

https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/releases/tag/v0.22.0

This is a big feature release that contains support for relay subscriptions and relay push connections, a new instance account directory, better threading using tombstones for deleted statuses,, and support for auto-cleanup of old remote statuses, among lots of other things!

⚠️⚠️⚠️ As always, please read the migration notes carefully for instructions on how to upgrade to this version, in particular note that there are several config file changes that need to be addressed when you're updating from a previous version of GoToSocial to this version.

This release also contains a long-ass database migration to move status boolean columns (like pinned, local, etc) to a single bitfield column. This saves a lot of space in the database, but it also means on startup the migration has to iterate through all statuses in your database and set the new field. Please be patient and don't interrupt this process! ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Release highlights

Relay support: GoToSocial now supports subscribing to relays (as an admin action), and pushing posts to relays (configured per-user, with filters available).
Documentation for admin-level relay subscriptions.
Documentation for user-level relays pushes.
Automated cleanup of old remote posts: you can now configure your instance to clean up threads of remote statuses that haven't been interacted with by anyone on your instance. This should save a lot of space in folks' databases!
Documentation for post caching + pruning.
Delivery error tracking for remote instances: there's now a page in the settings panel where admin can view errors encountered while attempting delivery of posts to instances that may be experiencing technical difficulties or may have gone offline. You can use this to get a quick view on possible "dead" instances that you can then remove from your database with a domain block.
Accounts directory: there's a new setting to allow admins to expose (or not) a directory of accounts on the instance! Your account will only be shown in the directory if you opt in via your privacy settings.
Documentation for inclusion in account directory.
Better tracking of deleted statuses/status tombstones: GtS now stores tombstones for deleted statuses, allowing threads to remain intact even when a status in the middle of the thread has been deleted.
Better status codes + info pages on deleted or hidden statuses: the old 404 page when you try to open a hidden status in the browser has been replaced with a more informative error page.
Way more configurable http server + client options: we've exposed a whole shitload of settings that you can tweak on the HTTP client + HTTP server that GoToSocial uses. We don't recommend changing these, but if you really want to, now you can.
Show your Träwelling status on your profile by setting your Träwelling page as a field value, similar to how our ListenBrainz integration already works.
Allow setting a name for your tokens, and sorting tokens by last used time in the token view of the settings page. Should make it a lot easier to track which tokens you've created, and when they were used by which apps!
Better layout for web view of profiles that hide all posts from the web: it just uses a single-column view now.

Thank you for reading and happy pride 🌈

We're currently experiencing some issues with some of our #GoToSocial instances.

We're looking into it and will let you know when we know more.

Thank you for your understanding.

i also don't seem to be able to follow my #NeoDB account from my #GoToSocial instance, not sure if anyone else has had luck with that or which end i should file a bug report on

Good morning Fedi friends,

I have been feeling a rising anxiety over the state of the open web and the fediverse - after seeing efforts by politicians all over the world (in Europe too!) to introduce age verification laws for social media.

My way of coping?

Teaching people how to self-host their own Fediverse profile (using the superb #GoToSocial) via #YunoHost.

Chapter 1 in this series is available here:

🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/a-newbies-guide-to-self-hosting-gotosocial-part-1-installation-and-set-up/

#resist #blog #ActivityPub #selfhosting

There is a person I've been helping for a while who runs two instances, one #GoToSocial and one #snac.

Yesterday, they suffered severe file system corruption on their device, and I lent them a hand with the recovery. For GoToSocial, they restored the DB from the previous backup and got it running again. For snac, although a few files were lost, no action was necessary... it just started back up and did what it had to do, bringing the instance back to full operation.

This goes to show that when software is well-designed and intentionally kept simple, it's also easier to get back up and running when something goes wrong. In this case, snac's "files-only" approach demonstrated excellent resilience.

Thanks, @grunfink !

#snac2 #snac #ThankYouTuesday #Efficiency #IT #SysAdmin #OwnYourData

Running a small or single user instance in the #Fediverse? Get connected to other instances by a relay!

I just adjusted my relay instance which now also finally supports #GoToSocial! Of course, it also supports Pleroma, snac, Mastodon, littlefedi, starling and many other ones!

With relays, your own posted content gets distributed to all connected instances, as well you get the content all other instances. Currently, mostly tech related instances are connected, focusing on #Linux, #Proxmox, #BSD / #FreeBSD, #IPv6 and many other things!

More information at: https://fedi-relay.gyptazy.com

#socialmedia #fedi #fediwall #fediverse #activitypub #activitypubrelay #relay #social #snac #snac2 #mastodon #gts #gotosocial #littlefedi #pleroma #misskey #services #devops #starling #tech