cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42450990

Features I can think of:

• a system for stricter content moderation, especially something that would automatically delete NSFW/NSFL posts,
• no direct messaging,
• some kind of tool for moderators to efficiently review content,
• multi-layered access to an account to allow for parental control,
• time management tool that would not be based on the client, but with the session duration calculated through interactions.

Bluesky has verified the account of ICE, which was a step too far for many in the fediverse, wanting to disconnect from the bridge between the networks

The presence itself of ICE on Bluesky is a form of harm, and Bluesky is not well equipped to deal with this new challenge. Making things worse, their verification system is set up to delegate responsibility, but instead they made no use of it

On Reddit, subreddit moderators can comment as regular users by default, and only show the green MOD badge when they intentionally “distinguish” a comment as an official moderation response.

It got me thinking about Lemmy.

On Lemmy, mod comments are often immediately identifiable, even when the mod is just participating casually in a discussion rather than speaking in an official capacity. That can sometimes unintentionally shift the tone of a thread or discourage open conversation.

Do you think Lemmy should consider:

A clearer opt-in distinction system for mod comments

The ability for mods to participate by default as regular users unless explicitly marking a comment as “mod voice”

Or is the current transparency model preferable for federated communities?

Curious how other instance admins, mods, and users feel about this — especially from a trust, power-balance, and community-health perspective.

Is this something Lemmy should copy from Reddit, or is it intentionally different for good reason?

Crossposted from https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@lemmy.zip/t/2330341

Crossposting to get more input (on the actual issues)

Fedi folks, I turn to you for advice with a bit of a problem. I co-admin an ActivityPub-enabled Wordpress site with 15+ years worth of blog posts and a couple of long podcast series. When WP announced their "vision" to become a CMS for "AI", the collective admin reaction was to get the hell off that boat before it turned to algorithmic shit.

[NB — I realise this isn't an anti-"AI" community, but that part is only the starting premise of our situation here. I'm not getting into discussions with slop herders in the comments]

We're a loose network of nerds discussing the speculative genres, including sci-fi. We've seen this movie, we know how it's going to play out. Trouble is, we're not coders. We can assemble the proverbial IKEA flatpak kit and give it a lick of CSS paint, but we can't be trusted to build furniture we'd want to sit in ourselves.

The crunch points for alternatives are

• the ability to migrate an old, multi-user WP site without breaking too many canonical URLs and feeds,

• needing a somewhat familiar backend for most of the non-techie contributors to even post stuff, and

• the federation bit, which is why I post this to !fediverse first. I am aware that setting up an essentially new fedi instance at the same address as a previous one is disencouraged. I'll be glad to hear how or if this can be avoided while preserving profile and post URLs...

So last month I mined the Mastodon hive mind for existing alternatives to WP with fediverse capabilities, and got a selection of qualified responses. I nixed WriteFreely and Plume early on, because while they are perfectly good, federated blog software, my impression is they lean toward a text focused minimalist layout that would be hard to deviate from, where our current site has a bit more pizzazz.

Going through the alternatives listed below, maybe that's a superficial reason to throw some good options out with the bath water. Either way, I'm presenting you with the most frequent, feasible, and/or interesting offers. I've done some surface research and weighed pros and cons for our use case, but I hope there are people out there who can add their experience to the eventual decision:

ClassicPress

This should be a shoo-in, right? It's basically Wordpress with some newer parts torn out (specifically the Gutenberg block editor), but most of the core architecture remains. Including many, many plug-ins. Plus, they're said to have sworn off any "AI" nonsense. Migration would be relatively easy, and with a little bit of luck nobody would even know the difference.

Except apparently compatibility with the WP-activityPub plugin broke. So that's out of the window.

Ghost

A lot of recommendations for Ghost! I believe it was originally another Wordpress fork, but was completely rewritten early on? Either way, a few things turn me off Ghost as an potential alternative:

• The insistent "we help you monetize your content" vibe on the project website. That's a personal quibble; our site is just entirely non-commercial for the sake of everybody's well-being. I'm told all of that stuff can be turned off in individual installs, though.

• Ghost's ActivityPub implementation is reportedly not making great progress despite enthusiastic early announcements? If that's not a deal breaker,

• the fact that the Ghost devs are relying on agentic LLMs to code the application is. Just nope.

Backdrop CMS/Drupal

From what I'm told, Drupal is a step up the CMS learning curve from Wordpress, but since they're projects that have coexisted for a long time, there are established and tried migration methods from one to the other.

I'm not exactly on top of Drupal's ActivityPub implementation, though. But even if that's in a workable shape, Drupal is trying to pitch itself as "the best AI-powered Open Source CMS in the world". Which, to me, is like saying you only put the sharpest razor blades available in kids' Hallowe'en candy.

One user involved in the Backdrop CMS fork from Drupal 7 made convincing arguments for that over later Drupal versions, so here's hoping they drank the right (ie., federated, not algorithmic) Kool Aid.

Hubzilla

Now, this may be the most exciting but also most challenging alternative. Hubzilla is a fairly advanced, and in some ways mold-breaking Fediverse application. From the same developer who made Friendica and (streams), and, if I understand correctly, based on the same core principles.

In contrast to Wordpress and Drupal, Hubzilla declares itself "a CMS which doesn't use LLM / AI". Can't say I don't appreciate that signalling! And of course the whole package revolves around federation. But wait.

The CMS part may be technically correct, but as far as I can tell making Hubzilla present as a plain blog or website requires some advanced stylesheet finagling — and the application only comes with one official, microblog-esque theme. I haven't found any open projects trying to bridge that visual gap, but will appreciate your tips about them if they exist.

For Hubzilla to be a feasible alternative here, we will also need to be able to migrate existing posts, media, users and comments from Wordpress. Preferably in a way that doesn't mess up permalinks too badly. A quick glance at Hubzilla urls indicate that the entire architecture is very different. I assume concepts like "channels" substitute "authors"(?) but I don't know where we are with WP terms like taxonomies.

So there's a challenge, and I'm hoping others have tried (and hopefully succeeded in) that particular migration... or at least have advice to offer.

Bonus: Bonfire

I'm putting this on the table because I expect somebody is going to suggest it in the comments. Like Hubzilla, Bonfire looks really interesting as a Swiss army knife for the Fediverse: You want to make a blog? Take these modules. A community forum? Try these other ones. It's federated first, and it seems to make good headway toward its goals.

But there is no official CMS flavour is still in development; we have no idea about migration possibilities, and honestly? The more mature Hubzilla will be a challenge, I'm fairly certain this is a step further out of our comfort zone. This is totally an "us" problem, not a Bonfire one.

So, thoughts? Specifically practical advice on Hubzilla and/or/versus Backdrop, which I think are the most realistic avenues right now. But there may be alternatives I just didn't see even though they're right in front of me.

I'm ready to have my mind changed on WriteFreely, or to hear about something completely new to me. Mostly though, I'm hoping for replies that consider the massive history of posts and comments that we look to import into the next generation of our site.

Thanks in advance!

I maintain four main blocklists for the Fediverse. Do not import them until you’ve read everything until the “receipts” section. I encourage blocklist skeptics to read the “receipts” sections, and to treat them as lists of reported content rather than importable blocklists.

Before anyone says it: yes, I know about Funkwhale.

Funkwhale is great, but what I’m imagining is slightly different.

I'm not just talking about a platform where users upload their own music, but something closer to how YouTube Music actually works. Artists would upload their own music and videos, either to a shared instance or to their own instance, and listeners could then stream them across the fediverse.

Something similar to how Peertube, Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon, etc work.

One of the big appeals of YouTube Music (at least IMO) is that since it runs off YouTube, you get an absolutely wild mix of content. Official tracks, obscure uploads, forgotten demos, weird one-off videos, hyper-niche stuff that would never exist on Spotify or Apple Music.

The closest alternative to it would be SoundCloud, but even then, SC is more underground music scene.

In theory, I could imagine a potential federated alternative that hooks into PeerTube. Maybe users log in with their PeerTube account or instance, and music-focused instances federate with video-focused ones.

Something like “PeerTube Music” or a dedicated ActivityPub music service that interoperates with PeerTube.

Obviously, you’re not going to get big-name artists right away (or maybe ever), but that’s true of basically every fediverse project at the start. You’d still get regular users, indie artists, experimental musicians, archive uploads, and all the strange internet music culture that YouTube Music accidentally preserves.

Curious what people here think:

Could PeerTube realistically be extended in this direction?

Is it feasible with current ActivityPub tooling?

Are there projects I’m missing that already aim for this, beyond Funkwhale?

Or does Funkwhale already cover more of this than I’m giving it credit for?

Interested to hear thoughts.

I would love to help with something like this, but, unfortunately, I lack the time and energy.

The host Search Engine, PJ Vogt, and the host of Hard Fork, Kevin Roose, discussed their thoughts about a “new kind of Internet” possible with the Fediverse. They also talked about the challenges of the somewhat technical barrier to entry.

I especially liked them sharing their perspectives; the Fediverse seems to simultaneously be a recreation of a pre-shittified Internet and something new altogether.

They even created their own live Mastodon server to see how that would go: https://theforkiverse.com/explore They ended up testing OpenAI’s Operator to do the heavy lifting of coding, but did make the realization they did not know how their own user verification works or how to change it.

I am just elated that there is talk in the “mainstream” of the Fediverse. I’m hopeful that some attention such as this can help raise awareness and pique some curiosities.

See here for examples:

• https://bsky.app/profile/unitedkingdom.feddit.uk.ap.brid.gy
• https://retrolemmy.com/post/31790836/17287584

There is still more testing and development needed, check the issue for more details.

Previously, I made a post about Crowdbucks, but I just had a random (most likely stupid) follow-up thought.

What if the issue isn’t which currency to use — but the assumption that it needs to be “real” currency at all?

What if, instead of money, there was something like FediCoin / FediBucks / credits / points (name doesn’t matter), NOT crypto, and NOT blockchain — more like how platforms such as Wattpad operate?

Or like how carnivals and fairs work: You exchange real money at a booth, and in return you get tokens or fake currency that are only usable inside that ecosystem.

Some comparisons:

Wattpad coins

App “credits” or points

Forum reputation systems with unlocks

Arcade tokens

Fair/carnival tickets

In a Fediverse context, this could hypothetically be used for things like:

Supporting instance costs

Boosting posts or creators (opt-in), which could then potentially be exchanged for real currency (maybe, idk)

Unlocking cosmetic or convenience features

Community rewards instead of ads

Again, not crypto, not speculation, not “number go up.” More like an internal exchange or contribution system that stays inside the Fediverse.

So my questions are:

Is this fundamentally incompatible with Fediverse values, or just unexplored?

Would this be more acceptable than direct monetization or ads?

Could something like this remain optional and non-extractive?

Has anyone already experimented with something similar?

I don’t have the time, energy, or technical knowledge to build something like this — just curious whether this idea is interesting, terrible, or already solved.

Would love to hear thoughts from people more familiar with Fediverse economics and culture.

EDIT:

It gives off Japanese Pachinko vibes.

https://immigrationnewscanada.ca/the-bizarre-world-of-japanese-pachinko-gambling-without-technically-gambling/

https://www.chenlawjournal.org/pachinko/

Lately, on Reddit, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about Amino shutting down or ceasing operations, which got me thinking.

For anyone unfamiliar: Amino is/was a mobile-first platform built around interest-based communities (fandoms, hobbies, media franchises, etc.). Each “Amino” functioned like its own mini-social network with:

Dedicated community spaces

User profiles

Posts, blogs, polls, and comments

Group chats & DMs

A strong emphasis on fandom and niche interests

It filled a space somewhere between forums, Discord, and social media — especially popular with fandoms and younger communities.

After seeing so many shutdown posts, I had a random thought:

What if there were a Fediverse-based alternative (or answer) to Amino?

Something like:

Federated, interest-specific communities

Community autonomy/moderation

Profiles that persist across instances

Discovery of niche fandoms without being locked into one corporate platform

I know that platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, Misskey, Friendica, etc. already exist, but none of them seem to directly replicate Amino’s “many micro-communities under one umbrella” vibe — especially with a mobile-friendly, fandom-first focus.

Personally, I’d love to help something like this exist — but realistically, I don’t have the time, energy, or technical knowledge to build or maintain such a project. This is more of a “thought experiment + community question” than a proposal.

So I’m curious what the Fediverse crowd thinks:

Does a Fediverse alternative to Amino already exist and I’ve just missed it?

Is the Fediverse even a good fit for that kind of community structure?

What challenges would something like this face (moderation, UX, onboarding, federation)?

Do you think displaced Amino communities would actually migrate to the Fediverse?

Interested to hear thoughts from people more familiar with Fediverse architecture and community dynamics.

Link to the Amino Subreddit

There's also apparently a spiritual successor in Kyodo

https://devlog.kyodo.app/blog/trick-or-treat-v2-circles

I built RootAccess to share my thoughts on cybersecurity, digital rights, privacy, and the global tech landscape. It’s a space for anyone curious about how technology shapes our world and how to take control of your digital life

I’d love for this to be a space for discussion, reflection, and maybe a bit of inspiration for people to take control of their digital lives. and yes, its federated. Check it out here: https://rootaccess.zist.digital/

The Fediverse is doing great, apparently.

I got recommended this article by TechCrunch, that was written yesterday (1:02 PM PST January 1, 2026), earlier this morning.

Apparently, according to the creator :

When you visit https://tv.theindiebeat.fm - bottom right, there's a pink follow button and you can follow the channel from your Fediverse server and the account will post when different shows are going live or when the chat is open. There's also a schedule button which says when all the different genre hours are on too. On the left under the live channel, there's also a "now playing" feature that links directly to the artist currently playing.

And then

later I stumbled upon Shops:

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/shops/5354

https://codeberg.org/potato/shops

And I was curious, would Shops perhaps potentially work as a potential Fediverse alternative / replacement for Amazon?

Lemmy claims decentralization, but once you join a community on one instance you’re still subject to that instance’s rules and moderators. Being banned from c/community@instance still means you can’t post there unless you make a new account elsewhere. That isn’t real decentralization, it’s just fragmentation where every instance ends up replicating the same centralized moderation power in a different place. Federated instances don’t stop this, they just scatter the same problem across multiple servers. If the goal is escaping centralized control, the reality is you still get banned, silenced, or cut off the same way, the only “freedom” is signing up somewhere else. That’s not decentralization in practice, it’s decentralization in name only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler

Or perhaps The Lightning Network?

(Yes, I know that TLN uses Bitcoin)

https://lightning.network/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network

This is mostly just word-vomit, but I had a random idea while doing a tonne of Xmas shopping and figured you guys might appreciate possibly chewing on it.

What if there potentially was a Fediverse-style alternative / competitor to Amazon Prime, etc. but instead of being one giant marketplace (a la Flohmarkt, etc.), it was made up of independent websites that federate together?

Think something architecturally similar to Lemmy, Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops by Pixelfed, etc, but:

No “instances” in the traditional sense (like Lemmy servers, Mastodon, instances, etc.)

Instead, each shop is its own fully independent website

(e.g.

Gotyka,

Dolls Kill,

Dracula Clothing,

VampireFreaks,

Killstar,

Hot Topic,

Barnes and Noble,

Home Depot,

Everlane,

Kotn,

Pact,

American Giant,

Taylor Stitch,

Outerknown,

plus other shops for books, electronics, home goods, etc.)

The federated layer wouldn’t replace their storefronts. It would just:

Aggregate listings / catalogs

Allow discovery, search, wishlists, maybe reviews

Potentially handle things like recommendations without centralizing power

Function kind of like a decentralized “market index” rather than a single store

In other words: a protocol + shared infrastructure, not a mega-store.

Some half-baked thoughts:

Users might sign in via each individual shop (or perhaps via a shared fediverse identity like ActivityPub / OAuth / something new)

Each store keeps control of branding, stock, payments, policies

The “platform” just connects them into one large, searchable, decentralized marketplace

No single Amazon-style choke point that can enshittify everything

I love this idea in theory, but realistically:

I don’t have the skills, knowledge, or time to build anything like this

I also don’t know if this already exists in some form (OpenBazaar vibes? Solid? Something ActivityPub-adjacent?)

This is more of a conceptual “what if” than a proposal

But the idea stuck with me because:

I hate how centralized Amazon is

I like how the Fediverse decentralizes control

And holiday shopping really highlights how fragmented yet monopolized online commerce has become

So I’m mostly curious:

Is this technically feasible with existing Fediverse tech?

Has something like this already been attempted?

What would be the biggest blockers — payments, trust, logistics, identity, incentives?

Would independent shops even want this, or would it be more attractive to smaller creators?

Is there a protocol or project adjacent to this idea?

This idea honestly came from Xmas shopping fatigue and bouncing between a million tabs, wishing there was a non-Amazon way to do “one stop shopping” without recreating Amazon itself.

Curious to hear thoughts, critiques, or “this already exists and you reinvented the wheel” responses.

Also, feel more than welcome to steal the idea.

EDIT:

Would something like Shops

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/shops/5354

work?

good for sharing off-fedi!

I recently came across three separate platforms:

Qortal: https://qortal.org/

ZeroNet: https://zeronet.io/

and

Plebbit: https://plebbit.com/

That all claim to be completely decentralized.

There's even talk about how Plebbit is more decentralized than the Fediverse, because the Fediverse is based off of instances.

https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/s/0ynXzrD5H6

And I was curious, would such a setup work better for the Fediverse, or is it basically just a huge scam/waste of time and money?

Look, I think Ghost is a really great publishing platform. But after dogfooding their Fediverse integration for six months, I'm realizing there's still a lot missing. With their blog dormant, I'm left to wonder: is development still happening?

- Ive been spending alot of time driving lately and I heard again about the impending ban on social media for under 16yo children in Australia.

It made me wonder whether there is as opportunity/ use case for #ActivityPub based solutions that allow schools / community groups to offer accounts to their parents - that could be then used by those parents to offer moderated/ controlled child accounts (for their children).

Parent accounts would have vistability and potentially control over who child accounts can follow/conmunicate with. Schools could use it for communication with parents and/or pupils.