#fediversemeta

Jupiter Rowland @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu · Dec 20, 2025

New Fediverse features that actually aren't new

Many innovations that are being "brought to the Fediverse" have been in the Fediverse for a decade or longer; CW: long (over 2,500 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

Whenever someone announces to "bring" something "to the Fediverse", chances are that Friendica has actually had it since 2010, for five and a half years longer than Mastodon has been around. For example, just about everyone on Mastodon is fully convinced that Eugen Rochko has brought quote-posts to the Fediverse this year. That's because next to nobody on Mastodon knows that Friendica has been able to quote-post practically everything in the Fediverse, including Mastodon toots, for 15 years now. And if Friendica doesn't have it, chances are still that Hubzilla has it, and that Hubzilla has probably had it for longer than Mastodon has been around, too. For example, private messages that are actually private. Mastodon doesn't have them because the "privacy" of Mastodon DMs is only "guaranteed" by limiting whom a DM is sent to. Hubzilla does have them and has had them since 2012, since it was still named Red. How? Because Hubzilla also limits who is permitted to see a DM. Oh, and Hubzilla even offers optional encryption on top of that. Or how about server-independent identity? Everyone still waiting for Bluesky to finally be the pioneer who invents this and implements it for the first time? LOL! Once again, Hubzilla has had this since 2012. Not a vague concept, not an unstable proof-of-concept, but daily-driven by production-grade channels on production-grade servers. (streams) has it, too, inherited from Hubzilla through a whole number of forks. Forte has it, too, and Forte is the first and, so far, only Fediverse server software that uses ActivityPub for nomadic identity. Now I'm waiting for someone to announce that something will "bring" actual groups "to the Fediverse". A feature that was actually introduced to the Fediverse by StatusNet in 2008, and that's also available on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. Not to mention that the very principle of the Threadiverse (Lemmy, the remains of /kbin, Mbin, PieFed) is based on groups. This is what happens when you think that the feature set of the whole Fediverse is the feature set of Mastodon and maybe Pixelfed because that's all you know. Speaking of Mastodon: Just because it's being "brought to the Fediverse", doesn't mean it'll be adopted by Mastodon. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonCentrism #MastodonNormativity #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity #StatusNet #Threadiverse #Lemmy #/kbin #Mbin #PieFed #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups

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Jupiter Rowland @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @patrickleavy@mastodon.social

@@patrickleavy@mastodon.social You don't even have to build it. It already exists in the Fediverse. No need to reinvent the wheel. Hubzilla, (streams) and forte offer you not only full nomadic identity, but also groups. Optionally private groups. That can optionally hide from Fediverse account/channel directories. Optionally with any number of moderators from anywhere on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. They have the most advanced permissions systems in the whole Fediverse. They support enclosed threaded one-post-many-comments conversations with thread titles like on Facebook, like on Tumblr, like on any blog out there, like in any forum out there. The character limit on Hubzilla is over 16 million; on (streams) and Forte, it's over 24 million. The number of options in polls is practically unlimited, as is the number of images that can be embedded in messages. And with "embedded," I mean like in a blog post or on a website with text above and below the images. At the same time, they're part of the Fediverse. Hubzilla is based on Zot6/an older version of Nomad; ActivityPub can be activated. (streams) is based on Nomad; ActivityPub is optional, but activated by default. Forte is based on ActivityPub. Any Fediverse software that recognises groups recognises their groups as such. Here is an article with a number of tables in which I've compared the features of Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392 CC: @@silverpill@mitra.social #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FacebookGroups #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups

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Jupiter Rowland @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @patrickleavy@mastodon.social

@@patrickleavy@mastodon.social A whole lot. Sorry, but this will be very very very long again. I don't know if you've read my previous (very long) commentary. But just implementing one or two FEPs won't get you the same full-blown nomadic identity (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Nomadic_identity) that Hubzilla (what I'm writing from right now; https://hubzilla.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) has had since 2012. And having this level of nomadic identity has to be the goal. What has to be done is: Take something like Mastodon. Non-nomadic. Where your account, your login, equals your identity. Make your identity cloneable Now, before you can make identities nomadic, you have to uncouple them from the login, from the account. Mastodon has to introduce a sort of container for your identity, like the channels that Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have always had (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Channels_(Hubzilla_&_(streams))) This is necessary so that a future nomadic Mastodon will know what to clone and what not to clone. For example, cloning your password is dangerous nonsense. So, everything that makes up your account except for your login credentials will have to be moved into this container. your short nameyour long nameyour profile images, including alt-textsyour profileyour followersyour followedyour toots, including stats like faves, boosts etc.copies of the conversation trees of all your toots, including stats like faves, boosts etc. as well as attached files for each messageall files you've ever attached to tootsyour settingsyour filtersyour mutesyour blocksyour server blocksetc.Essentially, everything except for your login credentials will have to be moved from directly residing on your account into that box. Change your login Also, your login will have to change from short name + passphrase to e-mail + passphrase. Your short name is part of your identity, it's in the container, it will be cloned, so it can't be used to log you in anymore. In order for this to work, half of Mastodon's server backend will have to be rewritten. Decentralised IDs Next, Mastodon must switch from the Webfinger IDs that it uses now to decentralised IDs as per FEP-ef61. For a while, I guess, it will have to use both next to one another. Then it will have to phase out its Webfinger IDs. The decentralised IDs must be tested against other Fediverse software that already understands them or that's nomadic itself: (streams), Forte, Mitra, Tootik. For example, @@silverpill@mitra.social of Mitra and @Mike Macgirvin of (streams) and Forte must test whether their software correctly understands Mastodon's DIDs. And the Mastodon developers must test whether Mastodon correctly understands the DIDs from Fediverse server applications that already use them. Once it has gotten rid of its Webfinger IDs, the next phase can start. Implement cloning within Mastodon The central element of nomadic identity is not the ability to move your identity. That's only a byproduct of cloning your identity. A clone, in nomadic identity, is a full backup of the container with your identity in it. A real-time, live, bidirectional backup that you can log into and use just like the "original". The clone always has the same idea as the original, regardless of which server it's on. The key elements of clones and cloning must be implemented and tested: cloning an identity container to a different server after registering a new, blank account therecloning an identity container to a different server where you already have an account with a different containerised identityanything that happens on the original being sync'd to the cloneanything that happens on the clone being sync'd to the originalclone going offline, things happening on the original, clone coming back online, things that happened on the original being reliably sync'd to the cloneoriginal going offline, clone still working with the ID based on the original's domainoriginal going offline, things happening on the clone, original coming back online, things that happened on the clone being reliably sync'd to the originalmaking additional clones of an identity container that has already been cloned at least oncethe whole syncing shebang from the original to any number of clonesthe whole syncing shebang from one of the clones to the original and also directly to the other clonesdeclaring one of the clones the new original, thus changing the ID of both the former original and all clones Implement moving within Mastodon Only when cloning works reliably, we can talk about moving, even though that's what everyone on Mastodon is giddy about. Why? Because moving involves cloning. It's an automated process. At least it is on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, and it really should be one on nomadic Mastodon. Basically, first you make a clone. Then you declare the clone the new original, and your old original is demoted to a clone. Then you have to wait until your change of ID from changing the original has federated to all your followers and followed and everywhere and whatnot. Then, one last sync so that both the former-clone-now-new-original and the old-original-now-clone are really identical, and you won't lose any data. Then your old-original-now-clone is deleted. We don't want to leave any dead stuff behind, now, do we? Lastly, if your old account where your old original used to reside has no other identity on it, the whole account is deleted. In nomadic containerised identity, accounts cannot/should not exist with no identity container on them. Cloning and moving beyond Mastodon The last possible step is still utter science-fiction: Cloning or moving from Mastodon to something else that's nomadic and understands FEP-ef61. Cloning or moving from Mastodon to Mitra. From Mastodon to Tootik. From Mastodon to (streams). From Mastodon to Forte. Oh, and maybe also back to Mastodon. The difficult part is not only to make Mastodon capable of cloning identity containers to other nomadic software. And to make Mastodon accept identity containers from other nomadic software being cloned to Mastodon. I mean, this would be difficult already. (streams) and Forte are vastly, vastly different from Mastodon. No, the difficult part is to make these four capable of cloning from or to someplace else. As it stands now, you can only clone from Mitra to Mitra, from Tootik to Tootik, from (streams) to (streams), from Forte to Forte. Even cloning between (streams) and Forte has never been possible, even though they're very similar. Oh, and cloning from and to Hubzilla is another story because Hubzilla doesn't have FEP-ef61 implemented. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra #Tootik #NomadicIdentity

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Jupiter Rowland @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu · Apr 27, 2026

Replying to @caohuak@moon.lonewolf.zone

@@caohuak@moon.lonewolf.zone @@silverpill@mitra.social Well, to be honest, that crypto stuff doesn't have its bad rep entirely undeservedly. It appears to be used as a cash grab or for get-rick-quick schemes more often than not. The massive gambling with the big cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum that causes both to be highly volatile. Gigantic Ethereum mining farms with countless high-end graphics cards that eat up more electricity than a bigger town, often even fossil or nuclear energy because there simply isn't enough renewable energy available where they're located. NFT hypes. Masses of NFTs that were procedurally generated and sold for insane amounts of money. See Bored Apes. They've made a few people very rich with next to zero effort. Others have lost a lot of money because these NFTs are literally absolutely worthless today. And this is a field that I'm pretty familiar with: The Metaverse. Mind you, I'm not talking about Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads. That isn't the Metaverse. I'm not talking about "the Metaverse" a.k.a. "the Meta Metaverse" a.k.a. "the Facebook Metaverse" a.k.a. "Zuckerberg's Metaverse" either which, by the way, is actually named Horizon. No, I'm talking about cryptobros jumping upon the Metaverse bandwagon, hoping to squeeze some money out of it. The blueprint of this all has to be a virtual world named Decentraland which was opened in February, 2020, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic that caused real-life social interaction to grind to a complete halt and made virtual worlds the more popular. In fact, it was a crypto platform before it became a virtual world. In 2017 already, its own cryptocurrency MANA, which is on the Ethereum blockchain, was first traded to raise money to get the world itself started. And even as a virtual world, it's a crypto platform because Decentraland is pretty much all about minting and selling NFTs. Part of its concept is that deeds to parcels of land are minted as NFTs and then sold. And these parcels aren't even that big. Better yet, they were sold before they even existed as actual virtual land. Basically, Decentraland sold deeds to something that they yet had to make. But they got enough customers to bite, including big fashion brands, but also real-estate companies that scooped up land to sell it with a big profit. Users, especially right-wing extremists, created avatars with slurs for names just to mint them as NFTs and sell them for a fortune. Nothing was done against it. I mean, the more NFTs were sold for MANA, the more MANA was traded, the more volatile it became, the higher profits one could make by trading it. Decentraland advertises itself as "the first decentralised Metaverse". This is nonsense. Yes, it's "decentralised" in the sense that MANA is not running on the Bitcoin blockchain. Yes, it's also "decentralised" in the sense of being governed by a DAO. But the virtual world system itself is a centralised, monolithic silo owned and operated by one and the same entity. The actual "first decentralised Metaverse" is made up of the worlds based on OpenSimulator from as early as 2007. This, by the way, is where I regularly am. It's every bit as decentralised as any Fediverse software out there. As in, you can have an avatar in one world and teleport to another world, on another server, under another domain, owned and operated by other people, appearance, inventory and all. As in, the five developers, including only one actual coder, don't own anything beyond their own patches of land. Another aspect that makes blatantly clear just how Decentraland is a crypto cash grab more than anything else: The actual world itself is buggy as hell. And precious little is done to fix these bugs. In fact, they don't even seem to matter because Decentraland is not about spending time in-world, which is why it's rather deserted and empty, but about minting, selling and buying NFTs. As COVID brought with itself a virtual world boom from which even Second Life could profit, crypto-based virtual world started spreading. For example, The Sandbox had already been bought out, and it came back in March as a crypto-based world. Hundreds of virtual worlds were at least announced in the early 2020s, all copying Decentraland's concept of minting deeds to virtual land as NFTs, backed by nothing more than an announcement and a promise, before even getting started with the actual virtual world. The latter was to be quickly and cheaply cobbled together using some 3-D game engine like Unity or Unreal Engine, neither of which is really fit for virtual worlds in which users can build stuff. The best outcome was an actual virtual world which was barely in a functional state. It only existed for there to be something backing the NFTs. Oftentimes, the financial assets behind the world were kept in cryptocurrencies, hoping that they rise in value which would create more financial assets out of nothing. But when the cryptocurrency crashed, it became impossible to pay for the operation of the world or whatever employees it had. Crypto crashes kept killing crypto-based worlds left and right. It didn't help that most crypto-based virtual worlds used existing cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin. In many other cases, however, there never was an actual virtual world to begin with. They never got it running. So their customers were sitting their with their expensive NFT land deeds and waiting for the actual land to be made. The longer it took for an announced virtual world to materialise, the harder it got to sell more NFT land deeds because the more unlikely it became that the actual land would ever exist. If plummeting land sales didn't put an end to the endeavour, the next crypto crash did. I think there were even scammers among these cryptobros. They, too, announced a hot new crypto-based virtual world. They, too, started selling land deeds as NFTs. But they never had the intention to actually create and launch a virtual world. They sold shit-tons of NFTs for shit-tons of crypto money. Then they waited for the cryptocurrency to soar. If they were smart, they traded it all for millions in fiat money and made away with it to someplace offshore. If they weren't, if they wanted to keep on gambling, they, too, lost almost everything in a crypto crash. Lastly: Around 2021/2022, many cryptobros staunchly insisted in virtual worlds absolutely requiring a blockchain, a cryptocurrency and NFTs for everything. According to them, it's technologically absolutely impossible to build virtual worlds without even only one of these. This was to keep people from getting interested (and invested) in non-crypto virtual worlds. As a matter of fact, however, there are lots of virtual worlds that don't use a blockchain, that don't have a cryptocurrency, that don't have NFTs for anything. Second Life doesn't, and it never has since its launch in 2002. And Second Life still generates more revenue per user and month than Facebook, legally even. OpenSim doesn't anywhere. Sansar didn't. High Fidelity didn't. Vircadia doesn't. Overte doesn't. Roblox doesn't. VRChat doesn't. Rec Room didn't. (Formerly Mozilla) Hubs doesn't. Horizon doesn't. Just to name a few. Some of these don't have any in-world payment system at all. All these blatant lies, the total neglect of the actual virtual worlds and their misuse as a money printer don't really make me trust in crypto. Neither do the rampant gambling and the volatility. Oh, and don't get me started about land prices in Decentraland vs Second Life vs OpenSim. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #VirtualWorlds #Metaverse #TheMetaverse #Decentraland #TheSandbox #Blockchain #Crypto #Cryptocurrency #Cryptocurrencies #NFT #NFTs #Cryptobros #Cryptomining #CryptoScam #CryptoCrash #NFTCrash

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Jupiter Rowland @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @silverpill@mitra.social

@@silverpill@mitra.social Probably someone who is very staunchly opposed to blockchains, crypto and NFTs... ...vs earlier Mitra that openly advertised exactly that stuff as its own future. To be honest, I'm not too fond of these three either. #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mitra

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Jupiter Rowland @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu · Mar 14, 2026

Boosted by

silverpill @silverpill@mitra.social

Replying to on mastodon.social

@@reiver@mastodon.social @@silverpill@mitra.social This is simply because little is written about Forte on the Web. However, I was there when Forte was born back in September, 2024. I was on (streams) back then. Mike Macgirvin had implemented FEP-ef61 in the "nomad" branch of the streams repository a few months ago to test it. When he was confident enough, he merged the "nomad" branch into the regular "dev" branch. In July, 2024, he merged the "dev" branch into the "release" branch, causing the FEP-ef61 implementation to be rolled out to daily-driver (streams) servers. However, it was a maze of Nomad and Zot6 and non-nomadic ActivityPub and FEP-ef61 identities for everything that boiled over. (streams) wouldn't federate with anything anymore, not even with itself. My two still existing (streams) channels, @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet and @Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams), were both affected by this. They were amongst the very first (streams) channels created on an account with FEP-ef61 DID support. Mike would spend half of the summer trying to figure out what had happened and how to fix it. Even while (streams) was still broken, Forte was born in August, 2024 when Mike forked the streams repository and ripped all traces of Nomad and Zot6 support out, probably also in order to get rid of the corresponding IDs and facilitate debugging. This means that FEP-ef61, which had literally caused this whole mayhem and which has to be considered responsible for Forte's very existence, was a) implemented in the streams repository when it was forked into Forte and b) not removed from Forte post-fork. It would not have made any sense to remove FEP-ef61 when one reason why Forte was made at that point in history was in order to debug FEP-ef61. Sidenotes: Mike managed to fix (streams). This whole issue burned him out so much that he officially quit developing Fediverse software, effective September 1st, 2024, midnight. He still carries on working on both (streams) and Forte because nobody else does, what with how many people even use them. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61

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Jupiter Rowland @jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu · Feb 12, 2026

Boosted by

silverpill @silverpill@mitra.social

Work has been resumed on establishing connections between the Fediverse and the likewise decentralised metaverse, i.e. OpenSimulator. For now, the only feature that's actually implemented is sending OpenSim group messages out via ActivityPub. However, it has been tested against the opposite end of the Fediverse from Mastodon: Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. https://codeberg.org/fionasweet/OS-AP https://opensimworld.com/post/128355 #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ActivityPub #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds

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#fediversemeta

New Fediverse features that actually aren't new

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