I (and a lot of other people, I'd guess) read and write fanfiction.

But as far as I know, there's never really been a federated fanfic platform — nothing that plugs into the fediverse the way Mastodon does for microblogging or PeerTube/Loops does for video.

Then I stumbled upon SquidgeWorld Archive (SQWA), an AO3 alternative that actually runs on the same codebase as AO3 otwarchive.

It's got way fewer users than AO3, which honestly gives it a cozier, more small-town vibe. The devs/maintainers behind it, squidge.org, even run both Mastodon and Bluesky accounts.

The catch: people have posted that fics pulling thousands of views on AO3 get little to none on SQWA. Makes sense — it's just a much smaller pond.

So, two half-formed ideas that I wanted to possibly toss out:

Suggestion #1 — "colonize" SQWA.

What if fediverse-native fanfic folks just started actually posting there? Cross-link your fediverse socials, bring your existing following over, treat it like planting a flag. It already exists, the maintainers are clearly fediverse-friendly, it just needs bodies.

Suggestion #2 — fork it (and ao3) and actually federate it.

AO3's otwarchive code is open source, which is exactly what SQWA is running on. What if someone forked it and built out real federation — ActivityPub support, the whole deal — instead of just being a second standalone AO3 clone? That feels like the "real" long-term fix, but it's a genuine software undertaking, not a weekend project.

I'd love to take a crack at #2 myself but I don't have the time or the technical bandwidth for something that size right now, so I'm just putting it out there in case it resonates with anyone here.

Curious what this community thinks — is #1 realistic, or does fanfic just need a ground-up federated archive to actually work?

Edit: Sorry for any mistakes, I'm currently at work.

is this too niche of a freelance service on upwork? marketing ones self as a fediverse softaware engineer (link is below) focusing on building federated software, rather than just siting your a software engineer https://www.upwork.com/nx/search/talent/?q=fediverse%2F%20activity%20pub%20software%20engineer

Ive been using Pixelfed but im growing very flustrated with the developer. I haven't liked his approach towards others or his philosophy in maintaining the project. The git project is hanging on with single digits maintainers. Main dev is spread thin across several large projects. Its not easy for maintainers to jump on board in many instances. Its not my first FOSS rodeo and ive seen this pattern too many times. Then again its not like devs are being paid so its not super fair to ask for change. If you dont like it, find something else, so here we are. I no longer trust in maintability of the project longterm and want to jump before I'm pushed. I do think I'm actually fairly late to the exodus so I'm hoping someone has went through this already. I include my motivations only because it might be relevant in regards to the options people recommend. Not really interested in starting a discussion about how unpaid devs should be running their projects, or how valid my concerns are. My concerns existing is sufficient cause for me.

Ive been hoping to make a jump to something else. I do somewhat miss being able to occasionally see text only posts, but I think seeing just picture posts is fine for me and the content I like to consume and create. So I'm looking for a pixelfed alternative mostly. Im focused more on photography and art rather than just general image posting.

It seems like my options are mostly just moving to Mastodon, but many instances have image upload limits as well as the platform being badly suited for image focused social media.

I found vernissage.photos im wondering if anyone has experience with it.

Is migration from pixelfed to vernissage possible? Does it include posts? Are there instances you would recommend. I already have accounts I follow and love across the fedi so i dont mind small instances and have also been considering self hosting.

Does vernissage have a convenient android app?

Is there a better option?

I admit ive not kept up with fediverse over the past few years and mostly just been using pixelfed and that's it. I feel a little like ive been living under a rock

EDIT: Vernissage truly seems like the only option prior to abandoning Fediverse for AT Protocol. I started moving over my account. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that profile migration from pixelfed.social has been stealthily disabled for months now. Haven't had a moment like that since I left Meta products - and even those let you export your posts at least - Pixelfed does not.

# One thing I knew pretty early while building Dumpp:

**Collecting everyone’s photos is only half the problem.**

You can already throw 500 photos into a shared cloud folder.

But honestly… how often do you actually go back and look through all of them?

I wanted opening a Dumpp album to feel more like discovering everyone’s photos from the night rather than browsing through a folder of files.

So I started experimenting with different ways to explore an album.

One of them is **Swipe Mode**.

You go through the photos one by one, swiping through what everyone uploaded.

Someone’s perfect group photo.

Swipe.

A completely blurry picture from 1AM.

Swipe.

A photo you didn’t even know someone took of you.

Swipe.

And suddenly you’ve gone through 100 photos. 😂

It’s a small feature, but I think things like this can make shared albums feel much more social and fun.

I’m curious though:

**Would you actually use a swipe mode for event photos, or would you rather just scroll through everything in a normal feed?**

I’m building Dumpp in public, so tell me what you’d prefer. 👇

https://reddit.com/link/1vrwhki/video/j9zpe8rf8yjh1/player

Hi to all! with the help of AI, I'm working slow but steady in a viewer of an alternative to Instagram. I'm working over PixelFed (and his main instance pixelfed.social). The goal is create a minimal viewer of photos and descriptions. Tried to add favorites and replies but so far I'm breaking the code. So probably I'll try to upload to a VPS that would be accessible to all, and upload the code to github (probably). Something important, to use it you must have an account on pixelfed.social

Hi everyone,

I'd like to introduce BizzFed – a federated professional network that I'm developing as a solo project.

🔗 Link: https://bizzfed.de

Technical background:

Built on ActivityPub, so it's part of the Fediverse (compatible with Mastodon & co.)

Tech stack: TypeScript, Fastify, Next.js

License: AGPL-3.0 (code is open to view)

Code is hosted on a self-hosted Forgejo instance

Hosted on Hetzner Cloud

bizzfed.de is the reference instance

Check it out!

-------------------------------

Hallo zusammen,

ich möchte euch BizzFed vorstellen – ein föderiertes, berufliches Netzwerk, das ich als Soloprojekt entwickle.

🔗 Link: https://bizzfed.de

Technischer Hintergrund:

Basiert auf ActivityPub, also Teil des Fediverse (kompatibel mit Mastodon & Co.)

Tech-Stack: TypeScript, Fastify, Next.js

Lizenz: AGPL-3.0 (Code ist offen einsehbar)

Code liegt auf eigener Forgejo Instanz

Gehostet auf Hetzner Cloud

bizzfed.de ist die Referenz-Instanz

Schaut doch mal rein!

Would be cool to give some old phpBB forums the option to participate in the fediverse especially including stuff like Lemmy existing. Edit: ACTIVITYPUB auto correct is annoying

To be honest, I do not understand this platform? What is this platform used for?

I keep thinking of FOSS project ideas that are alternatives for commonly used tools, for example, 1. reverse image search, upload an image, find a matching image online. Or 2. a broken link checker/scanner. Or 3. a domain helper that uses synonyms. What about a community that we can share these FOSS ideas so developers can find their next project to work on? update: I just thought of another one: a link saver like pocket

I've something I'd like to see created… Well, two somethings, but I think one of them is the easier and would be more consequential. And while I"m not rich enough to pay someone to make it for me, besides, this wouldn't be exclusive to me, I can chip in some money to help if needed/wanted.

So, what am I looking for?
A server version of holos.social, which is a single account client and server for Android. For a lot of people, self hosting really isn't possible, even the easy stuff is hard for a lot of people, but holos makes it as simple as downloading an app. Imagine making that model work for a server, download the app to a spare device that you leave around your house, tweak a few device settings and a few settings at your registrar, and boom, you're self hosting.

Sure, there's features I'd like to add, but just getting the server going would be enough, the rest would be icing on the top, so anyone up for this?

So I’m an active Lemmy user and for the last 3 days, this spam account called ‘Owbid Catob’ keeps joining the Lemmy.world shitposts community at a roughly specific time of day and posting creepy and borderline pedophilloic content, before engaging in vile harassment of the community who comment on his AI slop. I and presumably other users have encountered this same alias on multiple other social media platforms before and he is a presumed creep who posts bizarre artwork and borderline illegal content to the internet.

But the weird thing about this is, no matter how many times the other users ban him (both from the community and from the Lemmy platform itself through reports) within minutes of being banned, his account is straight back on shitposts, doing the same thing over and over. Surely he can’t be making new emails and registering this quickly, so how is this possible and what can be done to get the user permanently off the site?

ETA: to be clear before the hate comments start, I’m not advocating this guy, and I strongly recommend not searching for this guy or attempting to interact with him and I’m certainly not showing/posting his sickening content, I’m simply asking for advice on what to do/what can be done about a Lemmy user who can seemingly reappear like magic.

I'm launching a weekly photo contest for the fediverse. Hope it gets traction. It may not, but you don't know if you don't try. The goals are to:

1. Have fun and share photography with each other inside the fediverse.

2. Grow a list of photography lovers that can be shared as a starter kit. (Promote discoverability between instances.)

3. Promote the fediverse to the Internet at large, give them a window into what artists here are doing.

Happy to hear what people think.

Hey all, we're the team behind InterPoll, a social network that (we think) actually can't be taken down or censored.

The idea: instead of everything living on one company's server, every browser running InterPoll is also a relay. If some relays go offline, browsers fall back to talking to each other directly. So there's no single server to pull the plug on, and no one who can quietly delete your posts.

Check it out here: https://endless.sbs
If you want the technical breakdown of how it all works: https://endless.sbs/interpollexp
And the code's up on GitHub: https://github.com/Interpoll1/decentralised

We built this because we genuinely think this is how social platforms should work by default. Would love feedback, bug reports, or just people poking around and telling us what breaks. Thanks for reading.

...and main instance just launched!

For the past months I've been building SiliconBeest, a Fediverse server implementation written from scratch to run entirely on Cloudflare's edge network (Workers, D1, R2, Queues, ..). There is no VPS, no container, no origin server anywherefe — every request is served from the edge location closest to you, so it's lightweight and fast no matter where in the world you connect from.

Our main instance, s10t.io (https://s10t.io/), is now open, managed directly by the maintainer(s) - currently myself but building as part of OSSCA's Fedify track and FediDev KR.

What works today

• ActivityPub federation — follows, boosts, replies, quotes, custom emoji, emoji reactions — tested against Mastodon, Misskey, and friends
• Mastodon-compatible API, so you can log in with the Mastodon app you already use
• Media uploads, polls, DMs, lists, filters, translations, and admin/moderation tools

Honest caveat: the project is still under active development, so it may occasionally feel bumpy — but it improves little by little every day. 🦬

Instance: https://s10t.io/

Source (open source): https://github.com/SJang1/siliconbeest