There is a new setting for server operators in #Mastodon 4.4, under Administration -> Server Settings -> Discovery, called "Allow external sites to see your Mastodon server as a traffic source". If you're running a server for a larger group of people there is no privacy downside to enabling this, and it will help make the fediverse more visible as a traffic source to the rest of the web.
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Ric
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Eugen Rochko
in reply to Ric • • •Ric
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Piero Bosio
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •In my opinion, the default setting of not sending the referrer header is wrong. Is there a valid reason for this?
@dev_ric
zl2tod
in reply to Piero Bosio • • •@pierobosio
To avoid tracking and surveillance, obviously.
@Gargron @dev_ric
shadowwwind
in reply to Piero Bosio • • •Claudius
in reply to Piero Bosio • • •Piero Bosio
in reply to Claudius • • •@claudius
The referrer helps website administrators understand where web traffic is coming from. It's useful because it allows them to discover online resources.
@Gargron @dev_ric
Claudius
in reply to Piero Bosio • • •You're telling this to someone who had their first website in 1998. First self written web application in 2002. Worked as a web developer and sysadmin for a decade. Teaches networking and web technology for a living for almost 20 years now.
Thank you for explaining the concept of the referrer header to me. What made you think I didn't know that?
Piero Bosio
in reply to Claudius • • •@claudius
Well, congratulations, there's a need for people with experiences like yours. I didn't read that information in your profile.
LeoBurr
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Fuqiao Xue
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Mike Johnston
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Eugen Rochko
in reply to Mike Johnston • • •Jay
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •onnob
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Will this enable analysts to group all Mastodon domains together as ’Mastodon’ traffic source, or as social network ‘Mastodon’? Or will every server still show up as its own unique traffic source?
At work we are looking at ways to make Mastodon visible, but its distributed nature makes that hard right now.
My camera shoots fascists
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Interesting. I copied a link to forward to somebody and amidst all the gobbledygook after the "?" In the URL, I noticed that it said the source was mastodon. I thought to myself that this must be something new, and indeed it is!
I am guessing that means either my server or the one that the link was hosted on has implemented this. I think it's great. It will show publishers and any site the actual reach (for better or worse, I guess) they are getting on here.
Moritz
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Xavier B.
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Krisvdm
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Any work been done on the streaming/caching of media?
Eugen Rochko
Unknown parent • • •Timo Tijhof
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Ah, nice. The code mentions referrer instead of referer. Found it now.
Is this possible on iOS as well?
github.com/mastodon/mastodon-a…
Pass referrer when opening URLs in web browser · mastodon/mastodon-android@efe886a
GitHubMartin Holland
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •It would be really nice if it were possible to extend this so that it could set something like '?fediverse=mastodon' or similar in the referrer URL. That would make it easy for analytics tools to search for '?fediverse=' to find all referrals from any ActivityPub software and for '?fediverse=mastodon' to find Mastodon specifically.
Currently, each Mastodon instance will show up as its own thing and someone looking through the analytics needs to track which domains are running Mastodon (or other kinds of Fediverse software) and correlate them. Meanwhile, Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and so on each show up as a single referrer.
Eugen Rochko
Unknown parent • • •Ben Zucker 🍰
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •Cumulonimbus
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •