VEX.blue

Category: Fediverse

  • How to Turn on Fediverse Sharing on Threads

    Back when I wrote Decentralised Social Media an article about the Fediverse and some of the various projects I mentioned about writing another article about how to turn on ‘Fediverse Sharing’ on threads. This is that article.

    When you are on your Threads account navigate to settings and then account, so settings – account. You will see a little BETA icon next to a setting called Fediverse Sharing, If this says off click on it.

    This then brings up a ‘What is the Fediverse’ allowing you to read through what people would be able to do with you sharing to the Fediverse, we covered some of this in Decentralised Social Media. You can pretty much scroll and accept this if you understand what the Fediverse is.

    Make sure to click next, to accept you understand what the Fediverse. This will come up with a small page simply explaining that your posts could be stored on other peoples services even after you delete your posts, this is due to how data works. This is to be honest already happening with things such as Screenshots & websites that track deleted posts & comments, so isn’t really anything new.

    Simply if you don’t want it public, DO NOT POST IT. The internet is a place that doesn’t really forget stupid things you say, so be careful out there.

    To turn on Fediverse Sharing just press ‘Turn on Sharing’.

    Now that you’ve turned on Fediverse Sharing, you’d be able to access your account on places like Mastodon by typing @[Handle]@threads.net, so for ours at VEX.blue its @VEXdotblue@threads.net, warning some servers may have already blocked Threads meaning you may need to use another server.

    Your old posts will not be added the Fediverse but your new ones will be, also when someone from the Fediverse interacts you will not see the username at the moment, along with you can not reply to there comments just yet but further integration is meant to being worked on before the end of 2024. Thank you, feel free to follow us on Mastodon [@VEXdotblue@southampton.social] or on threads [@VEXdotblue@threads.net].

  • Connect your Bluesky account to the Fediverse

    Connect your Bluesky account to the Fediverse

    Having a Bluesky account can mean locking yourself off from the rest of the Fediverse at the moment, due to there custom protocol ‘AT Protocol’, I’m here today to give you a tutorial on how to make it so your Bluesky profile can be found on the rest of the Fediverse (Decentralised Social Media), as well as if you have a Fediverse account making it viewable on Bluesky.

    Bluesky to Fediverse
    If you wish for your Bluesky account to connect to the rest of the Fediverse you simply follow @ap.brid.gy on your account.

    After doing this you should be able to find your profile on Mastodon (or other Fediverse Software) via @[Your Handle]@bsky.brid.gy so for expample our VEX.blue account is @vex.blue so ours would be @vex.blue or if you wanted to go with my ‘Alt’ account for personal use it’s @samxavia.bsky.social making my account be found on the fediverse as @samxavia.bsky.social

    Simple right? Yes it is, sadly as of the recent flow of traffic from Brazil the syncing for Bluesky to the Fediverse is taking over 24 hours but will hopefully change in the near future.

    Bridgy Fed is struggling to handle the recent flood of new Bluesky users. 10-20x usage increase, wow! Fediverse => Bluesky is still bridging ok, but Bluesky => fediverse is well over a day behind. It'll take me some time to optimize it enough to handle the new load. Apologies for the delay!

    — Bridgy Fed for the fediverse (@ap.brid.gy) September 2, 2024 at 7:39 AM

    Fediverse to Bluesky
    Like connecting your bluesky account to the Fediverse you simply follow an account, this time @bsky.brid.gy

    You’d then find your account on bluesky as @[username].[Domain].ap.brid.gy so for my @sam@southampton.social account that I use for personal posting it’ll be @sam.southampton.social.ap.brid.gy

    This is obviously a long domain but it functions, sadly either way you sync your account any people that comment on your posts will need to do the opposite steps to make sure their account is accessible on the other platform(s).

    Conclusion
    It is simple to make your Bluesky or Fediverse account accessible with eachother, why not do it. All it will gain is the possible other service to access and be able to communicate with you, what is what the Fediverse is truely meant to be. From now on we at VEX.blue will not only be crossposting all of our posts between Mastodon, Threads & Bluesky but will cross our accounts over allowing people to follow whatever one they find more useful.

  • Decentralised Social media

    Decentralised Social media

    Lately there’s been plenty of talk about Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon & many more new Social Media platforms, along with something called the Fediverse. I thought I’d make a post about all of this, along with explain why we as VEX.blue actually love using these systems and encourage people to use them as well.

    So what is the Fediverse? – The Fediverse is a system of websites that connect to each other through a ‘protocol’ like Email, you can use Gmail.com and still connect and talk to people on Outlook.com. The Fediverse is using it’s own protocol mainly ‘ActivityPub’ for sites that run the Threads or Mastodon ‘Software’ / Code. Like email our usernames have our websites at the end of them to make it so we can communicate between websites. You wouldn’t want someone to take up NoobMaster69 on every website at the same time would we.

    My instance is Southampton.Social and my username is Sam, so simply my username you will follow me from is @sam@southampton.social easy right? This allows people on ‘Mastodon.iow.social’ to be also have the username ‘Sam’, so you’d follow @sam@mastodon.iow.social for them. These are two different accounts by two different people. It’s like if you have sam@gmail.com you wouldn’t own sam@outlook.com

    So what is Mastodon? – Mastodon is a microblogging website that has simular look to Twitter/X, just without the Toxic environment that it’s known for today. By Default on Mastodon ‘Instances’ / Websites you have 500 characters to work with per post or comment. This has been the go to place for interacting with people on the Fediverse for a long time but is not the Fediverse itself just is one of many software / code basis on it. The most common Mastodon instance is Mastodon.Social maybe go check it out sometime.

    What is Threads? – Threads is a microblogging app / website that is made by Instagram (Meta). When they first released the app they mentioned about joining the Fediverse so about 30% of instances have blocked them from being seen on there Instance. Also Threads even know are still in development and haven’t fully added all the features to 100% interact with everyone on the Fediverse, is an opt-in system through your settings on the website or app, so if you want me to see your posts please turn on ‘Fediverse Sharing’. Maybe we’ll do a little tutorial about it in the future.

    What is Bluesky? – Bluesky is another microblogging website but it actually doesn’t use the ActivityPub protocol making it harder to see the posts on places like Mastodon. There are ‘bridges’ out there but are completely a opt-in by both party system meaning even if you opt-in one end, the person replying to your posts will also need to opt-in to see them. Bluesky has a really cool interface as well great concept of what a decentralised social media could be but with AT Protocol being made by them and no other software being released with AT Protocol at the center of it, It doesn’t seem to be a great option for a decentralised website.

    Why should you care about Decentralisation? – With centralised systems your data is owned and even sold by the systems that you used, with self-hosting being accessable with decentralised systems like Mastodon you can not only control your data but also control who get’s to see it by blocking whole instances or just indeviduals from your whole instance or just your account. Also, with things like PixelFed (a decentralised photo sharing website – it’s very simular to Instagram) along with Lemmy (a decentralised forum website – simular to Reddit) you can choose how you see the posts you enjoy, along with how you can interact with it.

    Also why should you have to be on Facebook to interact with your friends on there, or why should you need a Twitter to interact with the one nice person on the platform. You should be able to interact with whoever you want without limitations. So why not join the Fediverse today. Thank you for reading.