Tech for the #fediverse, news and grab bag of tools
📱Social media management scheduling
The big tech news in the fediverse today is that Buffer adds Mastodon links. Buffer is a popular social media management software that allows scheduled post to social networks, and the first of such software that integrates with Mastodon. For now it is in closed beta.
đź“‹Proposal for new cooperative project for administrators
FediMod is a new proposal by Elan Hasson, that allows for better coordination between Mastodon admins on blocking and administration. The proposal is a first draft, explaining his thinking. He hopes that FediMod can solve help with the following problems:
- As an admin, it's difficult to keep track of the multiple admin chats and fediblock, in order to keep up to date with instances I need to block
- I would like to have a tool where I can choose to share blocks, reasons, and receipts with a group of admins I have vetted
- I would like to provide an onboarding mechanism for new admins to get both the history and context for blocks, so they aren't left in the wind
The proposal can be read here.
🤖Cool tech
One of the major advantages of an open source network is the creativity that developers can freely deploy, to the advantage of the entire network. As Chris Trottier posted:
A small grab bag of some projects:
- MaPleFeed is a tool to “Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey or WordPress Fediverse profile feeds on any web page”, developed by @abid
- Quintessense is a web application that “gives you the list of the links that have been tooted/boosted the most by people you follow”, developed by @ctbk@mastodon.uno">@ctbk
- Tootpick is a privacy-preserving share button for websites. Here is an example how it can look.
👀What we’re watching
While some tools may not be ready for launch just yet, they are definitely worth keeping an eye on. These are a few of the projects we're keeping a close watch on:
- Takahē, an “ActivityPub server designed for efficient use on small- to medium-size installations, and which allows you to host multiple domains on the same infrastructure.” See their website jointakahe.org/ or check their Takahē account at @takahe@jointakahe.org/">@takahe.
Multiple domains is definitely an interesting idea, as well as the focus on small and medium installations. This project seems quite far along in development, and we’re sure to hear more about it soon.
- Kbin, “an open source reddit-like content aggregator and microblogging platform for the fediverse.” Check it out at https://kbin.pub/en
Kbin is quite early in the project, and it can be hard to really grasp how it will look like in a fully functioning form. It borrows quite a lot from Lemmy as well. The design looks fresh, and we will definitely come back to check on this later.