#holossocial

Taking a step back helped me understand where my limits are. I'm giving up #HolosSocial and #Fedihood. They were both ambitious projects, and I can't carry them alone.

@_elena@mastodon.social There is a cultural problem. They have no idea about the internet, no imagination. I imagine the advent of many social networks like #holossocial , where every smartphone is the server.

#HolosSocial is not abandoned. I've put too much work into it to give up. During this time, the relay has proven very stable without any intervention. The sync process (a Bloom filter based on the following list) has greatly reduced the amount of synced data. It can still be improved by allowing some background syncing over Wi-Fi, to avoid long syncs after being offline for days. I should be able to publish the next release in November (Android, iOS, Mac and Linux).

Concerning #HolosSocial, I still believe it's an interesting project because it brought something new to the #Fediverse. Not only because you run your #ActivityPub server on your device, but mainly because you can own your identity with your own domain name. My mistake was making it easy to run the server on your device, but not to get your own identity. That will be my challenge in the coming months. PS: I have no funding for this project and I work alone, so yes, it takes time :)

I'm slowly getting back to #HolosSocial and #CastLab. I've seen people say Holos is now closed source. That's not the case. It's still on the official #FDroid, built from source. My custom repo just runs alongside it for faster updates and betas. I've never released an app or server version without publishing the source code first, and I never will. Open source isn't a label. It's code you can read before you install an app or use a service.

Regarding the critical PHP vulnerability, only two projects were affected and have been shut down (I will update them tomorrow): #Fediplan and the MediaWiki. All other projects, such as #HolosSocial, #HolosDiscover, #Fedihood and #Pawfed, were not affected.

Just a small reminder, if you appreciate my work on my projects: #Fedilab #CastLab #FediHood #HolosSocial #Fedle You can support them through #Liberapay https://liberapay.com/tom79 Or #KoFi: https://ko-fi.com/tom79 Thank you for considering it, if you can. Your support helps me keep going.

@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe - for #LittleFedi have you thought about using the same technique or even the say relays as #HolosSocial and #HolosDiscover to have the micro single users server speak to and see the larger Fediverse better?

#FediHood and #HolosSocial, two separate #Fediverse projects (that I maintain), can now send each other #E2EE DMs, fully over #ActivityPub.

@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org Am a huge fan of #holosdiscover and actually the entire #holossocial project.

#HolosSocial will soon get an update (relay + app). The focus is the sync process, which will be more aggressive through the Bloom filter. Currently, some activities aren't filtered upstream (mostly undo ones), so the device downloads and processes them for nothing. This was a kind of guardrail that's no longer necessary. With this release, the device downloads far fewer activities (around 80% of what arrived was useless), so sync will get much faster.

The #HolosSocial ecosystem has been moved to a self-hosted Forgejo instance at https://git.holos.social/tom79 Everything was preserved during the move (commits, issues, etc.). You can register an account or simply link your GitLab, GitHub or Codeberg account.

I moved the #HolosSocial projects (app, relay and discover, to stay consistent) to my own git at https://git.holos.social/tom79 As a reminder about this choice: I used an AI to write part of the #Holos docs, and also to review and help me fix some code I had written. At first I didn't feel concerned by the debate (no vibe coding on my side), but it went further than that. Out of respect for everyone using my work, transparency and action were needed. #Fedilab isn't affected and stays on #Codeberg.

Today, I updated the documentation for installing a relay (Docker, manual, automatic script). Behind the scenes, I reproduced each installation to adapt and fix the doc. Yes, the official #HolosSocial relay is coming to production after a long 10 months of work. The #YunoHost package will come next. Around 800 users on a relay is a small number of GB, everything is optimised, and it can run on a small VPS. I am quite proud of this work. Thank you for making it possible with your support.

#HolosSocial 1.15.0 is available. This release brings moderation tools for the relay staff, and an account standing page where everyone can see if they have strikes from a relay, with the possibility to appeal. A post preview is now shown in grouped notifications. It also brings several fixes, including boosts not reaching all followers servers, blocked accounts in hashtag tracking, and a stuck sync notification draining the battery. Release notes:

#HolosSocial should not take too much space on your device. First, it has automatic cleaning features that you can tailor to your needs. It also uses bloom filters that automatically remove unwanted activities from the relay. On my own server, almost 14k posts take only 225 MB, less than a few photos.

#ActivityPub carries posts, follows, likes and so on, but not moderation. A ban stays trapped on the instance that issued it. So, for instance, an account banned for racism on one instance stays unknown to the next. Moderation is activity too, and it should travel like the rest: signed and verifiable. This is a real problem, and others have explored it already. I will look into what already exists and see what we could build on for #HolosSocial.

A hypothetical about chat control and #HolosSocial Say a law one day required client-side scanning. The relay only ever sees encrypted data, so a scan would catch nothing. To read content, it must run in the client, before encryption. A closed client could add it silently in an update. An open one cannot: the code is public, anyone can recompile without it. Would an open source #E2EE messenger on the #Fediverse like Holos be breaking the law if it did nothing? I am not sure. Your opinion?

Last turn for #HolosSocial: a huge improvement of the moderation feature, also available through the API, so moderators will do it nicely from the app. Profiles will display badges (admin/moderator of a relay). The relay works differently from a centralised database on a server, but a moderated message will stop propagating, and other devices will automatically remove their copy. Would one or two long-term users be interested in becoming moderators on holos.social?

#HolosSocial 1.14.0 is now available on #TestFlight and #AltStore PAL for #iOS AltStore PAL: https://altstore.io/source/files.fedilab.app/altstore/pal.json?app=social.holos.app&version=1.14.0 TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/cpjNYF7k