fediverse

How to selfhost Peertube

I’ve been thinking about selfhosting my videos for quite a while now. Sure, Youtube is the de-facto-standard. But honestly, I don’t perform on ANY platform that is steered by an algorithm, and I simply dislike the way those monopolies can “dictate” what is seen and can be seen. Elena Rossini recently wrote a nice post about it, that nails it quite well. I know: I don’t pay for it, so what should I expect …

Anyways! I hesitated for quite a while to rent a VPS, install Peertube, maybe according databases, redirect a subdomain, keep it maintained … ah well … or maybe just not.

But – also thank you to Elena Rossini (@_elena@mastodon.social) – I got aware of YunoHost:

YunoHost is an operating system aiming to simplify server administration and therefore democratize self-hosting while making sure it stays reliable, secure, ethical and lightweight. It is a copylefted libre software project maintained exclusively by volunteers. Technically, it can be seen as a distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux and can be installed on many kinds of hardware.

And I must admit that I really liked the setup procedure! It’s well described in the Yunohost Documentation and worked like a charm.

If you are afraid of self-hosting any application listed in the YunoHost App-Store … DON’T be afraid. VPCs/VPSs are really cheap to get as well … I chose a tiny VPC from Strato for example.

See the result on https://video.franzgraf.de/

Give it a try! Self-hosting might be easier than you think.

Is it worth joining Mastodon?

These days I just hit the mark of 1500 followers on my photography account @hikingdude@mastodon.social on Mastodon.

That’s really – great, satisfying, surprising. Choose whatever you want. For an influencer on other platforms (the Entertainment media) this might not be a lot. But.. Wait…

Brasil’s Twitter/X ban shows once more an over centralized system

If you haven’t heard about it, on August 31st 2024 Brasil banned Twitter/X nationwide (see BBC, NYTimes, TheVerge).

There are numerous debates about the whys etc. But for this post I don’t care. My point here is: it once more shows the massive downside of such a centralized system.

“Death to the Algorithm” a recommended read

I just came across Jeffrey’s post “Death to the Algorithm | Jeffrey Inscho” and I so resonate with it!

Social Media Platforms vs Entertainment Platforms?

I often like to listen / read when someone tells about his or her experience on different social media platforms. And when it comes to Mastodon, I’ve noticed a recurring theme: Many users describe how other social networks fill their timelines with entertaining or funny content and that they were missing this in the beginning of their “Mastodon-experience”.

And at some point I thought by myself: “Wait wait wait – Are we still talking about social networks?” Is it the purpose of a social network to keep me entertained? I mean – this isn’t the expectation from my real-world-social-network, is it?

Mastodon is how the Web should be: OPEN

TL;DR: just add “.rss” to a mastodon profile or tags or user-tags to get an RSS stream! My photography profile @hikingdude@mastodon.social for example can easily be followed by an RSS Reader by following https://mastodon.social/@hikingdude.rss.

No account required! And that’s not even the end! 🤯

How to make ActivityPub plugin publish WordPress posts

In general it should be super simple to federate WordPress posts to the fediverse: Just simply install and activate the ActivityPub WordPress plugin and there you go.