I vibed a bot that regularly crawls fediverse.observer + each instance's API and generates comparison tables so you can actually compare instances side-by-side instead of guessing.

What's in the tables:

• Registration status (closed? open? admin-only?)
• Downvotes & NSFW enabled/disabled
• Monthly active users, uptime, software version

Two platforms:

• Lemmy instances — 520 instances
• PieFed instances — 83 instances

Data auto-updates every 6 hours. This is a fork/rewrite of maltfield's awesome-lemmy-instances (Rust -> Python), with PieFed support and federation-block data added.

Not looking to debate or stir up anything. But, I will say despite anyone’s thoughts the anti-meta fedi pact at least allowed people to have some information on where instances and people stood on federation with Threads. Some decisions were able to be made based on that information. I think if it doesn’t exist there should be one also regarding AI, which is a polarizing topic especially on fedi. I believe similar to the Threads issue it would allow people to make somewhat informed decisions one way or the other. Are there current lists, sites dedicated to this? If not what are you guys thoughts?

cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/14012800

https://canvas.fediverse.events/

July 18th (4am UTC) to July 20th (also 4am UTC)

Canvas 2026 is in roughly 60 days!

Canvas is an annual event hosted for the Fediverse, allowing everyone to contribute to a pixel canvas, one pixel at a time

Check out the website for a live countdown, login testing, chat room (matrix/discord), and what last year's Canvas was!

If you are a developer, check out the source, and if you're a Fediverse app dev check the docs to add Canvas functionality to your app 👀

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/yepowertrippinbastards/p/904933/rimu-mass-bans-users

Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?

@rimu@piefed.social

What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?

Mass instance bans

Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).

Done

Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).

Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.

He has abused the modlog to claim 'harassment', which I have never engaged in. I have not even interacted with Rimu in any way for days prior to getting kicked from the PieFed developer Matrix channels.

He has decided to mass ban 20 users because they have spoken out against his erratic and hostile behaviour as of late.

PieFed has done it once again, this time adding 'warning' labels for opposing ideological perspectives, well at least one; Can't find any warnings for fascism or capitalism 🤔

This can be demonstrated here: https://piefed.social/c/globalnews/p/1697164/sudan-civil-war-spills-over-into-neighboring-chad-peoples-dispatch

cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/37035115

Hey people,

Thank you again for coming together and submitting songs to Lemmyvision, it's heartwarming to see different communities of the fediverse participate in sharing their musical interest.

The voting form is available here: https://tally.so/r/GxY0ze

Everyone is welcome to vote, even if your instance or community did not participate! This is a great opportunity to discover new music, and cultures.

@Ategon@programming.dev took the time to create a playlist over at https://d2jam.com/c/lemmyvision-3 feel free to check it out!

Here's the full list of submitted songs:

• Vita - Merz Leck Eier
• Ecca Vandal - Bleach
• Boy Golden - Suffer
• Angine de Poitrine - Fabienk
• Elisapie - Uummati Attanarsimat (Heart of Glass) [Hologramme Remix]
• Igorrr - Limbo
• Signes à L'Œil - Quand on arrive en ville (D. Balavoine, N. Workman)
• Hyphen - This Might Be It
• Cris03sora - Markhamia Castle
• Swerve Strickland - Hit Different
• Jamie Paige - Birdbrain (w/ OK Glass) feat. Kasane Teto
• HAYASii - Hunting Soul
• Mudrat - Bars

The form will be available until around the 11th of May, I will then collect the results and publish them shortly after. I hope you’ll have a lot of fun listening to the 13 songs submitted for this edition. Don’t hesitate if you have any question!

https://smol.stream/
@lefractal@mstdn.social

https://framagit.org/owncast-things/owncast-emojiwall/
smol overlays
Chat overlay and emoji wall for Owncast streamers.
Add animated emoji and custom emote reactions, and stylish chat messages to your stream: no account needed, no download, no tracking, no lock-in. Paste a couple of URLs and go! Built for the best opensource stream systems: Owncast and OBS studio.

https://codeberg.org/smolstream/owncast-live-badge
Low config, CORS proof, embeddable web component that shows whether an Owncast stream is live.

Odysee has announced something interesting: they're building the ability to watch YouTube videos directly within their platform. Their reasoning is sound—it gives users frustrated with YouTube a better interface while still letting them access the content they want.

https://piunikaweb.com/2026/02/20/odysee-youtube-video-playback-feature/

https://www.tech2geek.net/odysee-to-let-users-watch-youtube-videos-directly-on-its-platform-a-major-shift-in-online-video-streaming/

This got me thinking: could PeerTube learn from this approach?

The Odysee Move: Strategic Context

Odysee's announcement frames this as a "game changer for everyone that's fed up with YT"—and creators' YouTube earnings won't be affected. The move essentially positions Odysee as a parallel interface to YouTube: you get better UX, less bloat, and potentially more privacy, but you're still accessing the same content.

It's pragmatic. Instead of competing head-to-head with YouTube's massive content library, they're saying: "Use our platform as your gateway instead."

Why This Could potentially Work for PeerTube

PeerTube's biggest weakness right now is the content problem. It's a fantastic platform for creators, but users looking for variety still have to go to YouTube for the bulk of video content. This creates friction and limits adoption.

A YouTube integration could solve this by:

1. Reducing friction for new users People could migrate to PeerTube gradually, discovering local content while still having access to their favorite YouTube creators.

2. **Increasing user engagement** More time spent on the platform = more discovery of federated content.

3. Privacy benefits Users watching YouTube through PeerTube (with privacy-respecting integrations) means they're not directly feeding YouTube's tracking apparatus.

4. Network effects More users means more potential creators, which attracts more viewers, which attracts more creators.

The Elephant in the Room: Privacy

Here's where PeerTube could actually do better than Odysee.

Instead of relying on YouTube embeds or direct scraping, PeerTube could potentially partner with, or integrate, privacy-respecting YouTube frontends like:

NewPipe - Open source, no account needed, ad-free

Invidious - Lightweight, privacy-focused alternative frontend

LibreTube - Modern, FOSS YouTube client

Piped - Another excellent privacy-respecting option

etc.

The advantage of this approach:

Users get YouTube access *without Google tracking them*

PeerTube positions itself as the privacy-conscious choice

It's a genuine value-add over native YouTube usage

These projects are already solving the technical challenges

The Counterargument: Mission Creep?

I can hear the pushback: "PeerTube's mission is to be a decentralized YouTube alternative, not a YouTube wrapper."

Fair point. But there's a difference between:

Being a platform for YouTube alternatives (feeding the centralized beast)

Being a platform that happens to also host YouTube access (while building something decentralized alongside it)

The second seems like a stronger position—you're not abandoning the mission of building federated video infrastructure; you're just acknowledging the world we actually live in.

What Would This Look Like?

Hypothetical scenario:

1. PeerTube instances could optionally enable a "YouTube Integration" feature

2. This would use privacy-respecting frontends (Piped, Invidious, LibreTube, etc.) as backends

3. Users see YouTube videos in the standard PeerTube interface, with full privacy proxying

4. The integration is federated friendly—it's just another content type the ActivityPub ecosystem can reference

## Questions for Discussion

Is this a slippery slope toward becoming "just" a YouTube wrapper?

What are the legal implications of integrating with privacy frontends? (vs. embedding YouTube directly)

How would this affect server load and moderation practices?

Does this dilute PeerTube's identity as an alternative, or strengthen it by making migration easier?

Are there other federated platforms that could benefit from this kind of hybrid approach?

I'm genuinely curious what the community thinks.

Edit:

Invidious might be the best route, if Peertube did up doing this, considering that Invidious also uses instances, as well

This is a follow-up to Tim Chambers' "The Seven Deadly UX Sins", in which we collaboratively review where and how the network has improved over the past six months, with a lot of different initiatives to show for it!

Christmas Eve? NOPE! Better!

FediForum Eve!

You don't know FediForum?

It's the Fediverse's premier online unconference!

TOMORROW!

https://fediforum.org/2026-04/

This is a service to help communities propagate to other instances and help with discovery of communities. So far tested and working with PieFed & Lemmy Instances - I suspect it should work with Mbin, but need to test it (Any Mbin Instance volunteers?)

Anyone is free to add their community to the list, but only admins can add their instance to receive communities.

This tool is designed to be simple to use, not requiring fiddling with your instances DNS unlike Lemmy-Federate. Verification for authority to register your instance is done via a message that checks to see if the person confirming is an admin account. It also back-propagates, so on joining your instance will subscribe to all previously added rather than only new ones going forward.

This is my first time launching a service like this, and as such it may not work flawlessly - please share any feedback or suggestions.

https://federation.quokk.au/

I was looking at the lists of instances and where they're hosted, weighing up migrating. Part of that was to figure out which servers might be best for connectivity issues with my region. But looking at the terms of service for some of the possibilities, I noticed that they often just say something like "This instance and your use is subject to the laws of ".

But lots of countries have unusual laws I couldn't know about. Some of them might affect data privacy, some of them might affect what can be said or shown in pictures, some might be seemingly random to a foreigner. Some of the laws might be beneficial to random people, others won't.

Obviously different instances decide how they choose to enforce their interpretations of those laws, rightly or questionably, but there's also the question of what happens if they receive a subpoena from their regional law enforcement.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to post anything that I think would be illegal in any country. But, for all I know, there's a law somewhere that says I have to spin around three times and then stand on one leg while writing any comment.

So, what regional laws should a user know about before choosing an instance? Bonus points for the unusual ones that will take me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I offer you a non-digital unusual law in return: Since 1313 it's illegal to wear a suit of armour in the UK Houses of Parliament.

Ibis is a federated encyclopedia with numerous features. If you want to start a wiki for a TV series, a videogame, or an open source project then Ibis is for you! You can register on an existing instance or install it on your own server. Then you can start editing on the topic of your choice, and connect to other Ibis instances for different topics. Federation ensures that articles get mirrored across many servers, and can be read even if the original instance goes down. Ibis is written in Rust and Webassembly, fully open source to make enshittification impossible.

After a long hiatus here is finally a new release of Ibis. The user interface received some polishing, and can now be translated to different languages. You can help with translations via Weblate.

If you already have an account and want to fill it with more articles, use the new Wikipedia import! You can import individual articles by Url on the "Create Post" page. Or write a bulk import script with curl https://ibis.example/api/v1/article/import -d 'url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet' -H 'Cookie: auth=my_auth_cookie'.

Full changelog

If you are interested what a federated wiki can do, join and give it a try. You can register on ibis.wiki, open.ibis.wiki or other instances. You can also install Ibis on your own server. It is very lightweight and can easily run on an existing server alongside other software. This release includes an additional installation method using Docker. To discuss the project, report problems or get support use the following links:

Lemmy | Matrix | Github

Looking for people running streams repository or forte to get some support. I find the projects really cool but they don't seem to be very popular. I intend to run either of them (or some other fediverse implementation) on my Yunohost server. Mainly want to find out if they're compatible with mobile apps and how to do basic configuration.

Link to Subreddit Post

Post Text:

Hey everyone, I've been working on a native tvOS Peertube client, PeerTV. Here's the App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/peertv/id6761736523

Sometimes I like to watch videos from my Peertube instance or a friend's instance on my apple tv, but I noticed a while ago that there weren't any tvOS Peertube clients available on the App Store. That is until now!

This application is open source on GitHub , so by all means, check it out and add requests for new features or bug fixes if you'd like.

Also, I recommend using it with my plug-in to add a randomized video tab to your Peertube instance. The PeerTV app has a setting that unlocks a special random video tab if you're using that plugin on the instance.

Disclaimer: I used a Claude model with cursor to help build out this project. If that is something important to you, then feel free to not use it or insult me in the comments. I mainly built this tool because | want it to exist. I have over 6+ years as a developer so I know what I'm doing for the most part. I did not just mindlessly tell the ai to build an application. There was a great effort on my part to ensure the app is secure, efficient, and functional.

Thanks!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45484461

Only found them by coincidence ;)

1️⃣ In "/settings/preferences/appearance" under "Advanced settings" you can find the option to "Warn me before posting media without alt text"

You can see the error message I see whenever I forget alttext in the second image hehe

2️⃣ When you post an image with text in it, you can simply use the magic AI feature "Add text from image". It usually works very well!

Alt text: "Screenshot of the warning you get with the warning for missing alt enabled. "Add alt text? Your post contains media without alt text. Adding descriptions helps make your content accessible to more people." Below it are 3 buttons "Cancel" "Post anyway" and "Add alt text"

Alt text: "Screenshot of the alt text window, the option "Add text from image" is circled in red.

This is how that "AI" option described the text of the image I posted: "Describe this for people with visual impairments. 1500 Add text from image"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45437770

I've been thinking a lot about the Fediverse ALT issue.

Some people are annoyed by posts without Alttext, & others get reminded¹ to add it.

The core question is: How can we improve accessibility?

Proposal: ☑️ Add a user filter to hide media posts without AltTag ☑️ Reduced engagement on hidden posts would encourage adding Alt text ☑️ People who need accessibility wouldn't have to encounter unlabeled media

If this gets traction, I'll open a Mastodon GitHub issue (maybe on others too?).

¹ https://mastodon.social/@madeindex/113996311493021102

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45299043

Publicly Run Social Media – A Solution for Europe?

TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are not neutral public spaces. Designed to maximise attention and engagement, these platforms play a major role in shaping public opinion in Europe. They amplify misinformation, polarisation and hate speech, while also encouraging patterns of use that harm mental health.

The EU has begun to respond through the Digital Services Act. Yet success up to now is limited.

Could Europe build a public-service social media model, inspired by public broadcasting – social media that protect democratic debate, strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty and offer a healthier online environment?

This event will explore that question and introduce a European Citizens’ Initiative calling for a European public-service social media infrastructure.

With Lukáš Mikulecký, Co-Leader of the European Citizens’s Initiative “European Public Social Network”.

New! 1:1 Conversations! After our one-hour open discussion, we invite you to stay for another 30 minutes. You’ll be paired up randomly and answer four questions together in a one-on-one conversation.

The idea behind: meet new people from across Europe and exchange ideas in a more personal setting. The breakout rooms will stay open for as long as you like.

I think it would be better to have these public spaces be outside the control of foreign tech companies, but I'm also unsure whether it would be better to have one centralized EU social media network. I think that the Fediverse (such as Mastodon) could be relevant here. How do other people feel about this?