Elena Rossini ⁂@_elena@mastodon.socialmastodon.social

ActivityPub 5.8.0 for WordPress is out now!

This update includes two things I’ve been especially excited about: new email templates and user-specific notification settings.

Emails now have way more information—mentions and direct messages embed the full post, and the refreshed design looks more modern and polished. New follower emails come with a profile card to help you get a sense of who’s engaging with your content.

#WordPress #ActivityPub

Full changelog: https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/#developers

Hello Fedi friends!

I'm currently getting an advanced degree in all things #PeerTube - after setting up my own self-hosted instance earlier this week (thanks @yunohost )

Joining an existing instance is one thing... but creating your own is a completely different ball game. I plan to write about all this for #TheFutureIsFederated... once I'm a little less clueless

A moment of gratitude for @FediTips and their excellent explainers: https://fedi.tips/peertube-video-hosting-on-the-fediverse/

P.S.: https://videos.elenarossini.com/a/ele/video-channels

Challenge accepted.

Fighting words from @molly0xfff's opening talk at the Fediverse House at SXSW 2025:

“We're facing an existential threat. We need a web that serves people not profit, a web built on protocols, not platforms…It's being built right now by people like you in communities like this one.”

Thank you, developers and denizens of the open social web.

https://flipboard.video/w/p7cECAUgThGrfQo9Cqvb8r

They want you to be scared.

They want you to be silent.

They want you to feel alone.

Refuse. Hope is an act of defiance.

It’s #WilliamShakespeare’s birthday today, and to celebrate, I’d like to share my favourite #Shakespeare quote:

Good morning Fedi friends!

My challenge this week: attempting to work a bit in a house where we are 4 adult caretakers and 3 children under 5.

Yesterday while my little one was belatedly painting Easter eggs with grandma, I managed to install #PeerTube – I’m not even sure how that happened! Never mind, I know: the ease of #YunoHost (thank you @yunohost)

I got up at 6am today to squeeze in a couple of hours of work before everyone wakes up.

Wishing you all a lovely day!

The magic of 22

December 22, 2024: I installed #GoToSocial on my Debian VPS thanks to #YunoHost → @elena

February 22, 2025: I installed #Ghost on my Ubuntu VPS using command lines (so many sudo commands!)

April 22, 2025: I upgraded my Debian VPS and installed #PeerTube!

Very excited about this new chapter in my #selfhosting adventures... and I need to find a worthy challenge for June 22

I love to see other creatives embracing Ghost.org as a publishing platform.

I'm really impressed by this blog post by photographer @sturmsucht - who is also joining the NOW page movement - as it takes full advantage of Ghost's elegant features: its full width photos, galleries and bookmarks. Impressive content AND visuals: https://blog.sturmsucht.de/february-march-2025/

Just another day advocating for #Ghost vs. Subst*ck (for ethical reasons and so much more - see my latest blog post).

cc @johnonolan

Mom: "It costs nothing to be polite."

Billionaire Techbro: "Actually..."

Me: boo hoo. The environmental impact of this mess is unbelievable and sad

I've got a quick favour to ask. If you're reading this post on Mastodon (or the Fediverse), please click boost.

How come?

I recently moved across to my own self-hosted single-user server (using GoToSocial.org). For a bunch of reasons, including visibility across the Fedi, it would really help out.

#Fediverse #FediHelp #gotosocial #mastohelp

Inspired a bit (or a bit more) by @_elena. Okay, and I also like playing around with tech stuff.

https://www.locked.de/myown-unplugtrump-to-more-digital-sovereignty/

Good morning Fedi friends!

So it is decided (and thank you for voting in yesterday's poll!)

I will create a series about "People of the Fediverse" - doing short, written interviews with fascinating people posting on here - across ages, nationalities and professions.

The impetus behind it? In a week I will start production of videos promoting the Fediverse and I won't have time anymore to write 2,000 word posts for #TheFutureIsFederated. Q&As are more manageable for the next 2 months

Back when I was in college, it was the credit card companies that were predatory toward students. Now it’s the AI companies. Get them young and get them hooked. Make an entire generation of students dependent on this tech, unable to think and create for themselves, and then you’ll have customers for life. Not out of loyalty, but out of necessity.

Yet another powerful post by @_elena about the need for writers and journalists to at least ALSO be present in the Fediverse.

#AdoptAWriter

"... I think that a way to improve the situation would be to extend a helping hand to journalists, writers and bloggers who are not super tech savvy… and volunteer to help them set up an account on the Fediverse and to move to a publishing platform that is not owned by VCs and on the way to certain enshittification."

https://mastodon.social/@_elena/114357796114177923

#OnThisDay, 18 Apr 1905, Baroness Bertha von Suttner becomes the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism.

As well as writing an influential novel, Lay Down Your Arms (1889), she founded the German Peace Society in 1892. In 1907 she was the only woman to attend the Second Hague Peace Convention, and warned that Europe was heading for war once again.

Because I always get my best ideas in the shower... here is what I just thought about:

Maybe I could create an interview series on #TheFutureIsFederated about "People of the Fediverse" - doing Q&As with interesting people across fields...

Good morning Fedi friends!

Today is a palpitations-inducing sort of day: my Ghost (Pro) #blog - that hosted all the posts for #TheFutureIsFederated, up to March of this year - is now slated to be deleted from Ghost's servers. Why?

I'm now #selfhosting my Ghost blog on a VPS at this address:

https://news.elenarossini.com

Time to update your RSS feed (if you're following the blog that way)... and I invite you to check out my latest post in its new home: https://news.elenarossini.com/this-is-what-resistance-to-the-digital-coup-looks-like/

have a nice day

How old am I?

I'm so old I remember when Google search provided more value than surveillance advertising.

I'm so old I remember when an operating system was not considered an advertising platform.

I'm so old I remember when "Artificial Intelligence" was a serious enquiry filled with brilliant people, and not a scam machine populated by sleazebags.

I'm so old I remember when "user" didn't mean "product".

I'm so old I remember when "corporation" didn't mean "person".

The other day I finally got it. Why #Bluesky is so popular with "regular people" (aka non-techies). It's because it's CENTRALIZED (of course the Bluesky folks would never admit it out right).

One name: Bluesky.
One official URL to join / browse / post messages
One official app: "Bluesky Social" on app stores

In this post-literate society where people have been trained by commercial social media for 2 DECADES to choose the easiest, most frictionless option, of course they will pick Bluesky over the #Fediverse.

Try introducing the concept of servers / instances and names like Mastodon, Sharkey, Pleroma, GoToSocial, Friendica, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Lemmy to people not familiar with them. They'd think you're speaking a foreign language.

The Fediverse is made up of thousands of independent servers. You can't log in to https://joinmastodon.org or https://joinpeertube.org to browse Mastodon or PeerTube. Conversely, when you log into Bluesky you see messages by Bluesky members.

People need to be educated first about defederated options and their numerous advantages.

I get it now. I'm still 1000% in when it comes to the Fediverse but I understand.

And I'm tired.

And I'm posting this here on my GoToSocial account because I wanted to say my piece in one go and I would have run into Mastodon character limits.

How many people have I convinced to join the Fediverse in my 9 months advocating for it through a blog? TWO. How many people are still active on it? One.

Off I go play with LEGOs with my little one - in 12 years, when she's old enough I will set up her own instance. So Fediverse, you gotta be thriving in 2037.