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GoToSocial is a new ActivityPub social network server for the Fediverse (github.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This service is still in Alpha release but is already deployable and usable, and federates with other Fediverse servers.

However, there is no "main" instance you go to join. The intention really is that you host your own instance for yourself and a few friends and family. To this end, it is designed to be very lightweight and will happily run on a Raspberry Pi or even a $5/pm VPS.

This is taking a very different approach from say Mastodon which has one main instance everyone could join, but then it sits with the issue that everyone joins there, and it becomes a bit "centralised". GoToSocial has been designed as lightweight for self-hosting, and also has a Docker image installation, so it makes it really easy for (and encourages) most people to host their own instance.

It seems to also be focussed very much around privacy (defaults to unlisted posts) and permission controls (for example, you have an option to post to mutual-only where both people follow each other). Also, by hosting your own service you set the rules, and you are also your own admin. You can choose to turn off likes, replies, boosts, etc as well. Being your own admin also means you can easily adjust the post length as well.

It does conform to the Mastodon API so apparently some Mastodon clients will also work fine with it.

See https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/

#technology #ActivityPub #GoToSocial

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Beta and moreso Alpha are tags that indicate a software is not ready for use in production environment, because it is either not secure or stable enough. Otherwise it wouldn't need to be tagged as Alpha or Beta.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (5 children)

From their site: "It is already deployable and useable, and it federates cleanly with many other Fediverse servers (not yet all). However, many things are not yet implemented, and there are plenty of bugs! We foresee entering beta around the beginning of 2024.". I would say it should be described more as beta by now from that description.

Gmail was in beta for many years whilst it was in production, and Meshtastic only has alpha and beta releases, with no "stable" release. I think some projects feel if they are still adding features it says in beta and never reall is in stable until they stop adding features. But yes they should actually iterate through alpha, beta, RC, stable. Not everyone does, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

If you go to the Meshtastic website, the Beta of the software is listed as Stable, with the Alpha branch considered the testing version: https://meshtastic.org/downloads/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but it is a bit unusual for a "beta" to be the stable version, when there is a such a thing as "stable". Beta is normally taken to be a testing version, between alpha and stable releases. But it shows we can't just go on our own assumptions about what alpha and beta mean.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

It entirely depends, but I don't think "Stable" is necessarily synonymous with "Release" versions. You can have a "stable" version where it functions correctly and there's no critical bugs that crash the program.

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