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Mastodon

Today we're launching a new #Mastodon feature that will highlight writers and journalists that are active on the fediverse when their their articles are being shared.

blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/07/

138 comments
David Schmidt

@Mastodon I saw this already out in the field. Very nice feature indeed.

Latte macchiato :blobcoffee: :ablobcat_longlong:

@Mastodon@mastodon.social really doing anything possible to avoid mentioning Pleroma or Misskey in blog posts, hm ​:neocat_woozy:​

Tamitha

@Mastodon "For now, if you’re part of a news organization, please reach out to us at hello@joinmastodon.org so we can enable it for your website."

So what does that mean for other instances? Do they need to email each admin/mod team?

Lionir

@tamitha @Mastodon I really don't understand why it'd ever need to be manually-approved. This is never true for any other embed/meta information. This feels pretty strange.

Matthew

@lio@hachyderm.io My only guess is that they don't want bad-actors pretending to be that author of the article and abused it.

@tamitha@indiepocalypse.social @Mastodon@mastodon.social

Cysio :verified_gay:​

@tamitha @Mastodon

> To prevent potential abuse (malicious websites could "frame" unknowing users by listing them as authors) this feature will only be available to publishers that have been approved for trending by each server's moderation team.

So your admin needs to approve the domain for trending (/admin/trends/links/publishers)

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/p

Tamitha

@me @Mastodon IE, they would need to reach out to every instance individually.

Cysio :verified_gay:​

@tamitha @Mastodon or instances could approve sites as they appear in the admin panel (I don't see the ability to proactively, manually add a domain to the approved list)

Tamitha

@me It feels like we're talking about two different things here. I'm not talking about approving trending links or domains. I'm talking about the part in the press release for it says if you're a news organization email us.

Cysio :verified_gay:​

@tamitha and I've described how it works on the technical side (based on @Gargron's own words from the pull request), confirming that it needs to be dealt with on the instance side, for each instance.

spaduf

@tamitha @me I believe that's just the procedure for mastodon.social. Each instance can have it's own criteria for approval.

FediThing 🏳️‍🌈

@tamitha @Mastodon

When the "news" trending feature (without the author credit) first launched, instances decided for themselves which sources they wanted appearing based on their instance policies. The actual sources didn't need to email anyone, the admins simply decided based upon the reputations of the sources.

As far as I can tell from the github it's the same situation with the author credit, but the Mastodon blog post has done a really bad job of explaining it by adding the part about emailing them. The blog ought to be about Mastodon software, not mastodon.social, but the blog is treating the two things as one thing.

@tamitha @Mastodon

When the "news" trending feature (without the author credit) first launched, instances decided for themselves which sources they wanted appearing based on their instance policies. The actual sources didn't need to email anyone, the admins simply decided based upon the reputations of the sources.

Pelle Wessman

@Flipboard @Mastodon Very similar to what eg Google+ did with rel-author and what I worked on implementing into Flattr back the as well. Not sure why rel-author isn’t used 🤔 microformats.org/wiki/rel-auth

Pelle Wessman

@Flipboard @Mastodon Added a comment about it: github.com/mastodon/mastodon/p

It’s sad to not see more cooperation between #Mastodon / #Fediverse and #IndieWeb

The latter is focused on social semantics for the web and the former for social semantics for ActivityPub – when the two overlap they should coordinate – and articles are very much web pages and something the #IndieWeb knows best practices around

Flipboard

@voxpelli @Mastodon Thanks for all this info! Our technical folk are mostly out this week for our July 4th shutdown but we'll pass along all the info you've shared (we're non-technical ourselves!).

Emelia 👸🏻

@Flipboard @voxpelli @Mastodon I suspect the answer to "why not rel author" is because that's just a URI iirc, not a fediverse native account?

Ted Johnson

@Mastodon Great idea. Can I just implement the OG tag on my blog? Is that all there is to it.

Emil Oppeln-Bronikowski

@HalfHeartedFanatic @Mastodon You might but it won't do a thing if you're not "approved journalist".

fr0g

@emil @HalfHeartedFanatic @Mastodon

For now. Instances approving the websites is only intended as a stop-gap solution it seems.

Sheogorath 🦊

@HalfHeartedFanatic @Mastodon it's not an OG tag and apparently currently it requires manual review so it won't magically work, but there is further development going on.

Ted Johnson

@sheogorath @Mastodon Correct: It's not an OG tag. I've gone and implemented it. I'll see if I can get my site blessed by the overlords of the fediverse.

Lord

@Mastodon Nice feature. I added this tag on my blog :-)

Aaron :apple_inc: :isles:

@Aminorjourney @Mastodon @show I think you have to put this new item into your meta tags on your site:

<meta name="fediverse:creator" content=“{your full @person@domain mastodon handle here}“>

I think that’s it? I’m not sure about the “Approved publishers” part yet because I think that’s not rolled out on non-nightly builds? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

god's second most hopeful ingot :colon_three:

@Mastodon mmmm i loove amassing and owning a loyal audience mm yessss audience loyal to me... that i own.... 🥺🥺

Peter Butler

@Mastodon This is very cool. I love to see it!

Louis Ingenthron

@Mastodon That... seems like a weird priority.

Louis Ingenthron

@gamingonlinux @Mastodon Mastodon is getting the crap beaten out of it by Threads and BluSky because they have basic features that we're missing, like onboarding and quote posts.

Helping journalists (most of whom aren't even on this platform) get credit for articles where they can already put their mastodon handle at the bottom seems to me to be a strange allocation of resources.

Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮

@LouisIngenthron @Mastodon Well, it's not a race, and Threads is connecting up with the Fediverse so they will work together anyway.

As for the feature, it's actually incredibly useful and makes it even easier to find people to follow. There's no downside to it, and it's just useful to have. I don't see the problem with it.

Vladimir Hristov

@gamingonlinux @LouisIngenthron @Mastodon

"They" don't let me use Linux anymore.
They broke about five laptops of mine just because I had Linux installed on them.

Thank you 💞😊

Lambert Heller

@Mastodon
Thanks, wonderful idea!
Let's implement this for research articles as well. Could be implemented for anything which is being linked by its DOI-address? 🤔
In the long run: once @ORCID_Org offers a specific field for researchers' Fediverse handles (like what we at @tibosl already did for VIVO), that handle can be fetched by means of DOI/ORCID metadata.

Dennis

@Lambo

Maybe the new feature is something for @PublicKnowledgeProject to look into.

@tibosl

Juan Pablo Alperin

@d2ns @Lambo @tibosl Initial thought from the @PublicKnowledgeProject dev team is that this would be pretty straight-forward to do, but the feature is currently limited to one account for each publisher, which won't work just yet.

Matthew

@Mastodon@mastodon.social Would there be a way to verify that it is that exact user that wrote the article, similar to the rel="me" tag?

Justin Ferrell

@Mastodon how does support for this show up in the API? I'd love to add a flag to @mastowatch so #MastoAdmin can show off their adoption!

Andy Piper

@developerjustin @Mastodon @mastowatch the card on a status now has an authors attribute (an array which currently always has one item), which has the properties name, url and account. Will be documenting properly this shortly.

Justin Ferrell

@andypiper @Mastodon @mastowatch thank you! Is there a property on the instance object showing if this is available on a given server?

Andy Piper

@developerjustin @Mastodon @mastowatch ah, no, that's not there that I know of - I'll make a note on that one.

Phillip de Wet

@Mastodon Journalists are, of course, entirely without ego. And none have ever felt the need to build a personal following just ICE.
But somehow I think this feature could be a winner.

[DATA EXPUNGED]
Anders Puck Nielsen

@Mastodon Great initiative. But frankly I think what journalists really want are quote posts.

Anders Puck Nielsen

@frog_reborn @Mastodon Or at least it is planned that at some point they will start working on it.

Anders Puck Nielsen

@andypiper @Mastodon Yes, but they have been on the roadmap for a year and still not been moved to the “In Progress” section.

Jay

> Of course, it’s also part of Mastodon’s API, so we expect to see support among the vast array of third party apps for Mastodon as well.

This is very cool.

blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/07/

Jay

This uses a new OpenGraph tag:

<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="(at)Gargron(at)mastodon.social" />

Jay

It would be very interesting to see #Bluesky support this OpenGraph tag, too, even for Bluesky handles.

<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="@example.bsky.social" />

Braw ☕🏳️‍🌈

@jsit Bluesky is not a part of the fediverse, it is its own thing.

Jay

@brawaru That raises an interesting question: Does “fediverse” refer only to ActivityPub?

mokane

@Mastodon But you still can't post documents.

Shane

@Mastodon

Cool. We don't have enough online spaces for amplifying lies. Thanks for showing us whose side you're on!

Jay

Here's an extremely quick-and-dirty way to get this new Mastodon author OpenGraph meta tag on your #WordPress site.

Note that this currently only works for pre-approved domains, so you won't see your little author icon chip just yet.

pastebin.com/dHmMDGAe

Le Geant Jaune

@Mastodon bonjour m. @paul_denton

Une nouvelle fonction à destination des média.

Peut être une meilleure visibilité pour vous.

mastodon.social/@Mastodon/1127

Distante

@Mastodon This is a great feature.

You should also add a warning under the links of inadequate media: "this media outlet is funded by a totalitarian state and often spreads disinformation, read euvsdisinfo.eu/learn/" or something like that. Of course, the administrator (or user) can disable such notifications.

We also need mobile apps to publish posts when the user has a bad internet connection. Now the post can get stuck loading and disappear forever

Beeks

@Mastodon
Journalists: give us quote toots.
Mastodon: best we can do is a clickable byline.

Andy Piper

@Beeks @Mastodon quote posts are on the roadmap, being worked on.

Beeks

@andypiper @Mastodon society is about to crumble Andy, we need them *now*. 😜

Adam Tinworth

@andypiper @Beeks @Mastodon

*whispers* I think clickable bylines are actually more useful to journalists, whatever they think…

[DATA EXPUNGED]
Matthias Pfefferle

@Mastodon is it with a leading @? I thought I read that it is simply the WebFinger address without acct: or leading @!?!

Pelle Wessman

@pfefferle It’s a bit disappointing that instead of being a link to a acct: URL which one can look up with WebFinger to discover ActivityPub endpoint etc with it’s something that looks almost proprietary in its nature

Kamera Chimera

@Mastodon seem to have problems with the feature on my Android Pixel 6. When I click the authors name the app just goes away. And when I open it again, the page I was on was gone.

Gregory

@kamerachimera @Mastodon thank you for reporting. There's now an update in review that fixes this.

Spooky Guy

@Mastodon does anyone know if Mastodon gets scraped for AI training?

Grant 🇺🇦ArmUkraine🇺🇦

@Mastodon Hopefully this encourages independent journalists who use Threads now to join an actual Mastodon instance. As it stands now, the people who operate Threads filter the content from some journalists they personally don't like. Seth Abramson is an example of one they have silenced. His posts don't make their way to Mastodon anymore.

Zuck is an asshole.

Lee 🌏

@Mastodon
I saw this. Already hit follow on a couple of @verge journalists.
Great feature.

Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

@Mastodon That's pretty neat, and a great idea! I'd also really like to see a feature similar to the starter packs idea on BlueSky where you can send an invite that includes a customizable list of suggested people (EDIT: and hashtags too!) to follow.

💫「mongrel mind」🛰️

@baralheia @Mastodon Holy moly, this would be a killer way to get people over that initial new account friction. Having groups of big tech journalists or popular artists would do a lot to keep people using the platform

Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

@sig @Mastodon Exactly my thought! Some of the groundwork to enable this already exists; you can already generate an invite to join your instance that will prompt someone using that invite to follow you. This could be built on top of that feature initially. Ultimately, I'd like to see it also be available separately from the invite system so that existing accounts can easily be given a list of suggested follows too, so it's not tied to joining any specific instance.

E.J.

@Mastodon Is the “their their" (sic) a test to see if journalists' editors are also paying attention to this announcement?

Ronald Augusto🌊🐧

@Mastodon 1. widget Android , 2 . Share post becomes images .

Adonnen

@Mastodon on the Android app. I tapped "Eugen Rochko" and it crashed 😅

Deus

@Mastodon Sigh! Back to good ol' 'Engagement'.

PeachMcD

@Mastodon Hoping @ThomHartmann will take note. He does great stuff on a number of platforms but #substack & #Xitter ain't where his best audience is these days 🙄

Cdnpup

@Mastodon please don't they have bias and unfair advantage of scale.

Oven🧪

@Mastodon Very cool to see, keep up the good work!

🦖
meh better to just login twitter
lorax b. horne

@Mastodon Quote toots is the thing journalists have actually asked for, so we can RT stuff and add context to it.

DELETED

@Mastodon

So this is the first step in creating a visible sign of #ownership like being #verified on #X (former #Twitter).

Demagoh

@Mastodon I might be annoying by saying this but the person that wrote this post put "their" twice instead of just once (it looks like this: "their their"). It's only a small error though.

Franck ☠️

@Mastodon I see the new meta in the header of this article with a content value not beginning by a @ (<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="Gargron@mastodon.social">) but the article says that it should be (<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="@Gargron" />).
Could you precise which one is correct?

Lee Thumwood :mastodon:

@Mastodon This is great! Hope it encourages all Journos onto the fediverse!

Jack Yan (甄爵恩)

@Mastodon Looking forward to seeing my name, in that case. Been here since 2017.

Baragesi

@trumpet ? Looks like more work for you, but I'll donate if you enable it!

trumpet@mastodon.scot

@Mastodon It's not actually been released yet, mastodon.social is running a pre-release version of the Mastodon software. Usually we stick to the official releases as we'd prefer to keep the instance stable! Let me look into it… 🙂

Lighty

@Mastodon needed feature. Thank you so much!!

Guillaum sans E

@Mastodon is this function limited to English speakers or do you plan to implement it for other languages?

onreact

@Mastodon Good idea.

The publication you feature as an example though is an infamous tabloid making up stories.

Why? They do it to scandalize topics and get enRagement from angry readers.

Please don't feature sensationalist tabloids guilty of spreading fake news.

Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:

@Mastodon
Excited to see stuff like this coming down the pipeline. Will hopefully encourage more article writers to make Fedi accounts, just so they have something to think.

#TheContentMustFlow

Sabertooth

@Mastodon The support for author attributes is already out in Sabertooth! 😉

jake (he/him) 🇵🇸

@ivory can you implement this new mastodon feature?

DELETED

@Mastodon Hey! If you're looking for a crypto recovery agency, I recommend doing some research online. There are several reputable agencies out there that specialize in helping people recover lost or stolen cryptocurrencies like #_RECOVERYEXPERTS on instagram/telegram. they have good reviews and a successful track record . Good luck!

Z(achary) Yaro

@Mastodon May I ask how the `fediverse:creator` meta tag was decided on over an addition to Open Graph or `rel="author"`?

bluebug

@Mastodon I would like to see bookmarks folders feature.Please 🙏 🥺

varpness

@Mastodon That sounds great! Love how Mastodon is always adding new, thoughtful features!

Games Games Games

@Mastodon @Gargaron Is the Mastodon onboarding going to be improved by 25th August?
"Mass Exodus From Twitter Set For 25th August"
The number of Mastodon accounts set up in Nov 2022, never to be used again was utterly ridiculous.
#twitterExodus #twitterMigration #XitterMigration #Xodus

AlexTECPlayz

@Mastodon perhaps you should fix this small addition of the '@' symbol in the blog.

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