Fediverse Report – #138
The News
WeDistribute has published an extensive overview and review of Wafrn, the Tumblr-like platform that is both on the fediverse as well as on ATProto. Wafrn is a unique platform in the open social web, and it is the first and only platform that fully integrates both protocols. The name Wafrn explains the tone of the project well: it stands for ‘We Allow Female Representing Nipples’, which is a reference to the language Tumblr used when they banned porn. Because Wafrn natively integrates both protocols, there is no bridging involved like there is with Bridgy Fed, and a Wafrn account connects with all accounts on both networks, although the ATProto features are somewhat limited and not all implemented. Wafrn also recently released a new feature to migrate your Bluesky account to a Wafrn server. This gives another option for people who are looking to move away from Bluesky and are interested in the fediverse, without having to give up their connection to the rest of the Bluesky network.
Short-form video platform Loops has announced it is joining the fediverse. In an announcement post, creator Daniel Supernault explains that Loops has now implemented support for ActivityPub. The marketing on Loops and the fediverse was always a bit fuzzy, while it was advertised as a fediverse platform, the actual fediverse integration was still in development. With this update, Loops is now using ActivityPub. However, this does not go for the main Loops server, Loops.video, just yet, as Supernault says that he is “working on an updated app build that supports the new APIs and other servers besides just the hardcoded loops.video server!” Supernault says that this will happen ‘this week’, although the project has missed deadlines before. Still, for those people who are self-hosting a Loops server, the code for federation is now indeed available.
In the update, Supernault also talks about some of the technical design choices that he’s made for federation with Loops. Loops servers use the ‘Note’ content type to send out the videos. This means that a Loops video is effectively quite similar to a microblog made on a platform like Mastodon or Misskey, which also use the ‘Note’ type. Most platforms indeed use ‘Note’, as this allows for compatibility with Mastodon. ActivityPub allows for a wide variety of content types (called Activities, which is where the protocol gets its name from), but in practice most platforms fall back to ‘Note’, even when other types (like ‘video’ for Loops) would make more sense. It indicates one of the challenges of the open-ended nature of how ActivityPub works: the protocol allows for a diverse set of Activities, but in practice it is more beneficial for most platforms to fall back to a single type, that all other platforms also use.
An excellent overview of last week’s FediForum by Richard MacManus for The New Stack. MacManus covers the keynote speech, as well as some of the products that were demoed at the event: alternative app store AltStore, how you can now move your Mastodon account to Bluesky with Bounce, as well as two platforms currently in development that are getting close to release: the privacy-focused photo sharing app Frequency, and the monetisation platform CrowdBucks.
Pandacap is a single-user artwork gallery and feed reading platform, that supports a wide range of protocols. It supports ActivityPub, ATProto, RSS. It also has the option to crosspost your image posts and text posts to attached DeviantArt, Fur Affinity, or Weasyl accounts. Pandacap does not have a timeline like most platform, instead opting for a design that centers around an inbox, similar to feed reading apps for RSS. Pandacap has been around for a bit, but I had completely missed it and don’t think I had ever covered it before.
PeerTube is now officially recognised as a Digital Public Good. A digital public good recognized by the Digital Public Goods Alliance is an open-source resource that uses approved open licenses and demonstrably supports at least one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). For PeerTube this means that it contributes to SDG 9, which aims to “significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries. PeerTube also contributes to the SDG for developing “effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels” and ensuring “responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels.”
Fedify, the ActivityPub server framework that secured two sources of funding last week, has a major new update, with security enhancements, improved DX, and expanded framework support.
An extensive interview with the creators of event planning app Mobilizon. Mobilizon got created by Framasoft, the organisation who also builds PeerTube. Framasoft saw the project as completed, and handed the further development over to Kaihuri, a small French organisation who also runs one of the most active Mobilizon instances. The Project Libres podcast interviews Alexandra, one of the two people behind Kaihuri, in French, but a transcript in English is available.
The Links
- This week’s fediverse software updates.
- The Solo Instance Problem – a PeerTube video by FediHost in which they talk about some of the challenges for self-hosting a solo instance for the fediverse.
- The Social Web Foundation talks with Ghost CEO John O’Nolan about Ghost 6 and ActivityPub.
- DiscoverFedi.app is a new site that lets you explore other instance’s timelines in various manners, with an accompanying blog post explaining the project.
connectedplaces.online/reports…
Discover the Fediverse
Yes, I’ve still got four tracks left to construct for my next album that’ll be releasing here in a few weeks. Don’t worry! I feel like I can get it done.⸸ commander ░ nova ⸸ :~$ (cmdr-nova@internet:~$)
Wafrn is for People Who Miss Tumblr’s Chaotic Energy
While Tumblr is said to be coming to the Fediverse sometime after its backend transition to WordPress, I wanted to take a moment to steer attention towards a home-grown effort largely inspired by Tumblr. Wafrn (pronounced “wah fern”) is an open source platform that seems to focus on a lesson that other social platforms seem to forget about: BEING FUN.
Wafrn’s Mascot, Waffy the Wafrn, a bug holding a heart and a waffle.
This project takes a bunch of inspiration from existing social networks, does a few crazy things on the side, and incorporates some legitimately impressive ideas to create something new.
The Social Experience
Right off the bat, Wafrn instantly feels different from Mastodon, Friendica, or even the many offshoots of Misskey. It incorporates ideas from all of these things, but also brings a bunch of fresh ideas to the table.
The “Superfan” theme strongly resemble’s the Tumblr dashboard.
Themes
Wafrn prides itself in allowing for user customization. There are a series of community-made themes readily available on the flagship instance, and it’s possible to inject your own custom CSS both on your dashboard as well as your personal profile.Personally, I’m in love with the Wafrn98 theme.
There’s a world of opportunity here, especially as users continue to explore recreating their favorite visual styles from other apps and networks. During my initial testing of Wafrn, I actually ended up writing a Cohost-style theme, and submitted it to the project’s official repository.
The theme is called “Cohfrn”, and now ships with the installation.
Creating Posts
Wafrn’s post editor is pretty bog-standard, but does a decent job at showing you exactly what your posts are going to look like. For those with Bluesky integration turned on, you’ll also see a character limit prompt, ensuring that your posts don’t run over the limit.
One thing worth mentioning here is that woots support rich formatting through a combination of HTML, Markdown, and CSS attributes. While Wafrn doesn’t yet support Misskey-Flavored Markdown, the community is still able to create absolute gems like the following:
The future is now.Feeds
For the time being, Wafrn supports three different user feeds: the Dashboard, Explore Wafrn, and Wafrn & Friends. These all incorporate subtle differences, so I’ll try my best to explain them. With the platform supporting Bluesky and the AT Protocol, my hope is that we might one day see support for Bluesky’s Custom Feeds, which would be amazing for discovery.The Dashboard
The user Dashboard is strictly a no-frills timeline that focuses on who you’re following, and what they’re boosting or posting. You can see comments and reactions from mutuals on posts (called “woots”), and it’s all clean and easy to use.
Explore Wafrn
The Explore Wafrn timeline appears to solely focus on posts created or boosted by local Wafrn accounts, and includes a fair amount of people that you do not directly follow.
Wafrn & Friends
The Wafrn & Friends timeline ultimately combines the Explore Wafrn feed with posts from friendly servers that the Wafrn instance is also connected to. Here, you can find all kinds of stuff from the rest of the Fediverse: Mastodon, Friendica, Misskey, Bluesky, PeerTube, and even WordPress all managed to show up!
Asks
One super-underrated feature carried over from Tumblr is Asks, a Question-and-Answer feature for the Inbox that allows people to publicly answer questions. What’s really cool about this is that any Fediverse account can ask a question using special formatting. To do this, just append a Private post with the following:
![url=https://mastodon.xy-space.de/users/ASK]ASK[/url] @username@instance.tld YOUR QUESTION HERE
As a result, questions appear in a special tab like so:
If you choose to answer the prompt, the question and your response show up as a special post on the timelines.
Ignore the fact that I asked myself to tell an awkward story. This is for demonstration purposes.
The nice thing here is that this feature is 100% opt-in, and you can even choose whether to only allow Asks from mutual connections, or also open it up to anonymous people. It’s definitely something I’ve missed from using Tumblr, and I would love to use it more.
Bites
One of the most recent feature additions in Wafrn are “Bites”, which are basically pokes, but more furry-themed. Users can bite other users as well as posts, and cute little notifications get created in response.
It’s a small, silly feature, but it’s one more indication of how the community likes to have fun on the platform.Bluesky Integration
One of the most impressive parts of Wafrn is the fact that it implements the AT Protocol from scratch, and can natively connect to Bluesky. This isn’t a protocol bridge, so much as it’s a native implementation that connects a Fediverse platform with Bluesky and its wider network.
Support is still experimental and limited, but most posts and profiles translate remarkably well with the default Bluesky app. Direct Messages between Bluesky and Wafrn don’t work yet, and some of the wider features of AT Proto (custom feeds, moderation, labelers, and other integrations) aren’t supported yet. Still, it’s an impressive feat, and day-to-day social usage works pretty great.As an aside, Wafrn also offers the ability to fully migrate from Bluesky onto Wafrn itself, all while preserving posts, friends, and followers. Pretty cool!
Super Secret Menu
For some time now, Wafrn has sported an extra-special, super-secret menu. Inside of it is an embedded WASM build of DosBox, running a copy of Doom. When I first discovered this, I was utterly speechless. It runs great, and completely works.
The Community
I still have no idea what the acronym WAFRN stands for. My best guess is “We Are Friends Right Now”, but I keep getting different answers, and can’t be sure if any of them are serious. Wafrn’s creator, Gabboman, suggested that this is a reference to Tumblr’s 2018 porn ban, with the acronym standing for “We Allow Female Presenting Nipples”. However, alternative suggestions include “What Asshole Fucking wRote Name”, and “We All Fuck Real Northerners”. The lack of consensus only makes Wafrn more fun.Other Wafrnisms within the community are as follows: Mastodon’s toots are now woots, Wafrn users are unofficially called waffles, and there’s some absolutely wild custom themes available.
Yes, this is a real theme, called “Rizzler”.
Wafrn’s community is funny. Really funny. Within the first five minutes of browsing the site, I hit a dozen or so hysterical shitposts from people trying to act completely unhinged. There’s a healthy overlap between Wafrn’s local users, and playful posters from Misskey, Akkoma, Bluesky, and the funnier parts of Mastodon. The overall impression is very reminiscent of Tumblr’s “Yes And” culture, and it’s well-curated.
This was funnier when Silksong hadn’t come out yet. Guess how long it took me to finish this review?
As a final golden touch, Wafrn offers a Custom Word filter that allows you to transform the word “AI” to “cocaine” or any other word every time you see it.
It’s really, really fun to see in practice. Again, it’s simple and just a funny idea, but these little details end up setting Wafrn apart from its peers.
Screenshot credit: Little1Lost on Wafrn
In Conclusion
Wafrn is awesome, and taps into a specific niche that falls somewhere between Tumblr, Cohost, and “Weird Twitter”. It’s goofy and nerdy and passionate, and seems to be constantly evolving into a better version of itself. I love what I’m seeing so far, and hope to see the platform continue to grow. There’s an enormous promise in a project like this, and it’s refreshing to see how fun it is to use.What We Loved
- Great design, easy to use.
- Lots of customization available
- Super fun community
- Native AT Protocol integration
- Asks, Bites, and an embedded version of Doom
- Emoji confetti explodes whenever you do something!
- Pretty good mobile apps!
- The AI “Cocaine” filter.
What We’d Like To see
- Support for Bluesky’s Custom Feeds.
- Support for AT Protocol integration with other apps?
- Better media embeds and Link Previews.
- Misskey Flavored Markdown?
- More robust search with Webfinger support.
- Wafrn needs to more aggressively recruit people from Tumblr and other communities.
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