Episode: 3780
Title: HPR3780: Fediverse Update May 2022
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3780/hpr3780.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 05:16:10

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,780 for Friday the 27th of January 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Fediverse Update May 2022.
It is part of the series' social media.
It is hosted by Aoka, and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is his episode reports on some updates to the Fediverse that I ran across
in May 2022.
Hello.
This is Aoka.
Welcome you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in our better social media
series.
And what I want to do this time is just bring up some news and notes from the world of
the Fediverse.
I tend to work pretty far ahead.
So these were things that actually crossed my desk in May of 2022, and I'm just getting
around to putting this out now.
But part of the reason is I tend to work way ahead of when things go up on Hacker Public
Radio.
So here are some developments that I think are worth a report.
And I think they help illustrate why the Fediverse can be such a nice place.
And the first one I want to talk about is screen readers in Mastodon.
Mastodon is the micro blog, say you might call it an alternative to Twitter, uses activity
pub, wonderful application, and I know a number of Hacker Public Radio people are on
there because we follow each other there.
So it's nice to know that accessibility is also something we can enjoy when we're in
the Fediverse.
And this is something a fellow named changeling who is himself a blind user, which is good
because it means he's talking from experience here.
And he's taken the time to put some tips together in what he calls changeling's guide to
Mastodon for screen reader users.
Now this is something near and dear to my heart because some years back in the early days
of the web, I was in charge of my university website and brought it in a compliance with
the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And sadly, I actually had to overcome some resistance since some of the administrations,
the well, none of our students are blind, well, stuff you have to deal with.
Now to this day, I always put alt text on any images I post.
It's just muscle memory at this point.
Now anyway, back to changeling's guide, changeling has written this in the form of seven chapters.
Now, at the time I'm writing this in May, five chapters have been written, the last two
were in process, but he's knocking these out every few weeks.
So by the time this gets out on hacker public radio, you know, barring some disaster, it
should be complete.
So what are the chapters here?
Chapter one, introduction.
Chapter two, a closer look, joining instances and signing up.
Chapter three, creating your profile and sending your first toot.
Now for those of you who haven't gotten onto mastodon, a toot is the mastodon equivalent
of a tweet.
Okay, chapter four, more on posts and following.
Chapter five, timelines and interacting.
Chapter six, settings, tools and apps and chapter seven, final thoughts.
One of the things I like, it's a small thing I know, but he has set the links to these
chapters to open in a new tab instead of overwriting the page.
I always try to do that on my site because I think it makes navigation easier.
This tutorial we should emphasize is not about any specific screen reader, but rather
it is about how to use a screen reader with mastodon to get the best results.
So this implies you need to know a little something about the screen reader you're using.
The good news is that mastodon appears to be designed for accessibility from the beginning.
That said, the author, changeling, felt there was a need to help other users who may encounter
issues or frustrations so he wrote this guide.
And it not only does what it says it will do, it also gives some good basic information
on mastodon for those who may not be familiar with it and are looking for an alternative.
And he usually points out that while mastodon may be better than Twitter in some respects,
it's still a place where people hang out.
And some of those people can be pretty bad as a recent case with Will Wheaton illustrates.
I put a link to that in the show notes in case you don't know what that one was about.
As I pointed out in a previous article on mastodon, each instance has its own rules of behavior.
And I'm on an instance that suits me quite well.
And I support the maintainer through Patreon because they put in time and money to keep
it going and deserve the support.
My own experience has been quite good on mastodon, but I'm happy to block someone from my
feet if they bug me and I do block people.
No problem with that.
Now, a change thing also goes into some features that I omitted in my initial review of mastodon
but have come to understand and appreciate.
Now one of these is what they call content warnings.
These overlay your text.
What it really does is it hides the text, puts a little description about what the text
is about, and then a button that the reader can click on if they want to see it.
And what that does is it gives the readers a chance to avoid something that they might
wish to avoid for whatever reason.
Some common types of warning include sexual content, nudity, etc., mental health, food,
gross, body image, body harm, body horror, gender dysphoria, gender identity, mentions of
self harm, thoughts of self harm, and so on.
Now for a sighted person, you can do this by clicking the CW button at the bottom of
the Compose window, but change things shows how to do it on a screen reader using keyboard
clicks.
Now this is very useful, and as part of the community I belong to on mastodon, I see
it frequently for post to contain political rants, and I think that's a useful courtesy.
I tend to get kind of political myself, and so I like to do that.
Just as a courtesy to someone who is not interested in my political views.
And that's fine.
I don't really expect everyone to agree with me.
Now members, we said before, every instance of mastodon can have its own rules and its
own culture, and who you choose to follow and who chooses to follow you also has a lot
to do with your community.
Now I think Changeling's Guide is an excellent guide, and while it specifically aimed at
users using screen readers, there is lots of information that will be valuable to any
new user.
And as I said, I think you'll finish those last two chapters pretty soon, probably by
the time most people hear this report.
Now the next thing I want to report on is Fediverse.info.
And this is a new site put together by the folks at PixelFed with a little assistance from
a company called Framisoft, and those are both things I have reported on elsewhere
in this series.
So let's just say those are active parts of the Fediverse.
It looks like a good development.
Fediverse.info is an information site, and while PixelFed was the driver here, they
want it to be independent and impartial.
When they announced it in a tut, they said, we made HTTPS Fediverse.info for you.
The Fediverse, this represents more than just PixelFed, and we recognize how important
it is to remain unbiased and not use this to further our own project.
Our long-term goal for this is to turn it over to a reputable nonprofit organization if
possible.
Now it looks as if the intention is to develop this site as an information resource for
people interested in the Fediverse, and right now there are three kinds of information.
This is a directory of people that uses hashtags to identify interests.
So if you wanted to find people to follow, you could try a few hashtags, and get back
some suggestions for people you might want to follow.
And there is a procedure to add yourself if you need to get more people to follow you,
and explain the procedure for doing this.
I've already been seeing people post and mastodon that they have added themselves to this
directory, so word is getting out.
This is a list of projects that are part of the Fediverse.
Now the selection criteria seems to be projects that use either activity pub or O status as
the protocols to communicate with each other.
Now this means you won't see projects like diaspora that use some other protocol, even
though in other respects they are federated non-centralized projects.
But there are lots of projects to check out, and I'd wager some you might never have
known existed, such as go to social, which is a go lang server.
Now third is a list of mobile apps to use with Fediverse projects, and both Android and
iOS are represented.
Most of the apps are for mastodon, which is not surprising that is probably the most used
Fediverse app right now.
There is one pixel fed app that I saw at the time of writing this.
Among the mastodon apps is one that claims that it is accessible.
It's called Metatext, and it's an iOS app for mastodon.
Being an iOS app you get it through the Apple store, but I noticed that in the reviews it
supports image descriptions and has a 4.5 out of 5 rating.
In addition there is an FAQ section, it's just getting started.
It has only a few basic questions, for instance, what is the Fediverse, what is a hashtag,
pretty basic, but I imagine it will add more material over time.
So the site is not the be all and end all of Fediverse information, at least not yet, but
it may grow into that, and it's worth a look, and in a weak space between the time I first
wrote this and the time I'm recording this show, I've already seen several more features
get added.
So it's, again, it's actively being developed, and that's always a good sign to me.
Now the last news note I want to report in is a WordPress plugin, and what it will do
is it let you connect your blog to the Fediverse.
It's called Activity Pub for WordPress.
This will let people on Fediverse apps such as mastodon follow your blog, see your blog
posts in their timeline, comment on them, like them, share them, you know, all the stuff
you can do.
Now this only works right now for independently hosted instances of WordPress, since the
free sites on WordPress.com are not allowed to use plugins.
Of course, you could go for a paid option there, but it is expensive.
In any case, this is one more way the Fediverse is making it easier for us to share information.
Now as I write this, it is in beta, by the time this show comes out in Hacker Public
Radio, it may have gone gold, but right now it works on the following platforms.
Mastodon, Pluroma, Frendica, Hubsila, Pixel Fed, Social Home, and Miskey.
Now remember, any platform using Activity Pub can let you read, like, comment, and share
any posts from any other Activity Pub platform.
And that's how this Fediverse and Activity Pub is supposed to work.
That's been the vision for it all along.
So I think these are some useful bits of news.
I'm a big fan of the Fediverse in general, and particularly the part built on Activity
Pub.
So I like reporting when there's good news here.
So this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio, signing off and encouraging you as always to
support FreeSoftware.
Bye bye.
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