Discover the Fediverse

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Yes, I’ve still got four tracks left to construct for my next album that’ll be releasing here in a few weeks. Don’t worry! I feel like I can get it done. That aside, I’ve been working on this thing for a little bit, and I definitely wouldn’t call it “final” or “done,” but it is functional, and can be used. What’s the thing I’m talking about? Well, I’ve been a part of the Fediverse since about 2017. I remember like it was just yesterday that I was registered on mastodon.social and newly swearing off Twitter in the midst of the tail-end of GamerGate, and I sat for hours and watched the federated timeline zip by. I was entranced.

Fast forward a few years … Okay, more like … eight years, and on social media that isn’t the Fediverse (Bluesky, especially), I see people talking about how hard it is to find an instance they want to be on, or even just view the Fediverse to check things out. That it’s all “convoluted” and “difficult,” or *clunky”.

Now, this is definitely probably also clunky, but I’ve put together a web app on a newly purchased domain, at discoverfedi.app.

Here’s the long version, as opposed to my social media post, about what it does, and what it’s limitations currently are:

• 1: The app let’s you browse the federated timeline of a target instance, specified by you. The default is mastodon.social, since it’s one of the largest, and most well-known servers. There are some limitations with this, as some servers may not display correctly, some have privacy settings that don’t allow loading their public timeline, and some are blocked by the hard-coded blocklist referenced from GardenFence.

• 2: There’s an “image-only” view you can use with the instance you’re viewing to give a more “Instagram” like feel to your viewing experience. This is more an aesthetic flavor sort of thing, and just lets you get a quicker glimpse of what users on a specific instance are posting.

• 3: The search function lets you search the entire fediverse primarily using filters, but this is definitely still under construction, as there are 20,000+ servers, and I have to figure out how to more easily filter a search so that: You can see any instance that matches your search criteria, and also won’t take 5 minutes to load

• 4: There’s an option to show/hide NSFW content from the view.

• 5: There’s a function to manually select a light or dark theme, or let the app use your system settings (auto-selection untested, my desktop is just dark, and it’s currently night here, so my phone is set to dark mode lol)

• 6: As mentioned before, instances that are considered harmful are using a hardcoded blocklist that references GardenFence. Some limitations with this, is that, when viewing a federated timeline of an instance, you may see content that is otherwise blocked from being accessed via the search or target instance features. This, along with making the search more robust, is something I need to look further into.

• 7: The webapp requires no logging in, no credentials. It only uses a cookie to save your “favorites” and viewing mode selection (which you can select per instance you have loaded, so that you can view instances you liked later on via the favorite UI).

So, that’s most everything outlined. Again, this isn’t final, there are issues I need to work out, but it is functional. Currently, it’ll mostly only show you instances that are really big, and I want to fix that, because it shouldn’t just be the huge instances that you see while searching. Maybe … make it more random? Use a different search engine altogether? We’ll see.

I don’t know if this will make it easier for people who aren’t familiar with the fediverse to choose something, but it’ll at least making viewing different instances a bit easier, since this app allows you to do all of that, right in the same place.