I had a random idea and wanted to see what people here think.

Given the amount of success that the platform Upscrolled has gotten / received, what if there was a PixelFed instance designed in a similar spirit?

Upscrolled is basically already functioning as an alternative to Instagram anyway, so it made me wonder if something like this could translate well to a photo/video-focused platform like PixelFed.

---

In theory, it could:

• Give activists and leftist creators a dedicated visual space
• Help bring more people into the Fediverse
• Provide an Instagram-style instance that aligns more with the politics many users on decentralized platforms already hold

Since PixelFed instances can already have their own culture, moderation policies, and community focus, it seems like it could fit pretty naturally.

---

Curious what people here think:

• Do you think something like this would work?
• Does anything like this already exist in the PixelFed ecosystem?
• Would it help grow the Fediverse or just fragment things more?

Interested to hear people's thoughts.

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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/29/whats-upscrolled-the-app-gaining-popularity-after-tiktoks-us-takeover

https://lifehacker.com/tech/what-is-upscrolled

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpScrolled

https://upscrolled.com/en/

I'm a long time reddit user.. I should say I'm quite hooked. But lemmy feels a lot quiet. My primary interests are electronics, embedded programming, piracy 😏 and selfhosting. Apart from the last community the others are quite deserted.

I'v been on and off since past 1 1/2 years. No change..

On the other hand Mastodon is going well. And I nurture the interactions there. Lemmy could be the same. I too feel Reddit is kinda on-to-your face and aggressive.

I made a post over on Upscrolled recommending people check out the Fediverse:

https://share.upscrolled.com/en/post/6890f5f0-159f-11f1-8080-80006ddcdcfc/

It was kind of a random thought, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

Upscrolled is a newer, strongly pro-Palestine/Leftist platform, and a lot of the users there already care about decentralization, censorship resistance, and not relying on big corporate platforms.

That feels very aligned with what the Fediverse is about.

---

Since it’s still growing, I’d imagine a lot of users there might be open to trying alternatives like Mastodon, Lemmy, PeerTube, Loops, etc.

Especially if it’s framed less as “leave your platform” and more as “here’s a broader network you can also be part of.”

---

I was also curious if anyone else here was interested in recommending the Fediverse over there, as well.

Not in a spammy way, obviously — just sharing info and letting people know there are decentralized options that line up with their values.

Curious what others think.

---

Edit:

https://upscrolled.com/en/about/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpScrolled

https://lifehacker.com/tech/what-is-upscrolled

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/29/whats-upscrolled-the-app-gaining-popularity-after-tiktoks-us-takeover

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/45160073

I've been working on Habitat for the past two years. It all stemmed from this idea that I posted in April 2024.

Habitat is a free open-source, self hosted social platform for local communities. It is aimed at fostering local community discussions and discovery of areas of interest. This is why it is built primarily around location. A Habitat instance centers on a specific area, and the local community can make generic posts about that area, or they can make posts about specific locations in that area. More about what I've been building and the future plans here.

Features

• Habitat specification of location and size - enabling posts related to the local area
• Home feed - Displays the most recent posts
• Nearby feed - Displays posts sorted by proximity to the user
• Create posts - Upload photos, set locations, comments
• Categories - Location rules
• Amazon S3 image storage option
• Personalisation - Overrides Habitat defaults per user: kms/miles, hidden categories
• Moderation tools - User, post, comment moderation, block email addresses
• Announcements - Scheduled announcements
• Public moderation log - Keep moderator actions visible for 30 days

If you're interest in this at all, please give it a spin and let me know how you get on. I'll keep an eye here on Lemmy, but you can also post to the Habitat discussion board on GitHub.

Telegram channels are sort of unique in that they combine broadcasting read-only messages and having a full-blown chat, like any other group chat. Is there anything similar in federated messengers? For now I have to split up my single community into a microblog on Mastodon and a group chat in Matrix and this is super inconvenient.

I know you can create read-only rooms in Matrix, but there's no way for people to comment under posts. There's also a beta support for channels in Delta Chat, but there's comment section either.

So I’ve been thinking about the whole PSKY winning the bid for WBD situation, plus a ton of other US News sites being owned and controlled by MAGA — and now that PSKY owns massive legacy brands like CNN and platforms like TikTok, it got me wondering:

What would it look like if the Fediverse built its own large-scale news station?

---

And I don’t mean news apps (I know things like Flipboard already exist and are experimenting with federation). I mean:

A full-on journalism operation that is:

Fediverse-first

Hosted via PeerTube, Loops, its own website, etc.

Producing regular news broadcasts, investigative journalism, live streams, analysis panels, documentaries, etc.

---

Two Possible Models

1. Professional Model (CNN-style equivalent)

A structured newsroom:

Editors, reporters, correspondents

Daily live broadcasts via PeerTube

Clip distribution via Loops

Federation across Mastodon/Lemmy/Pixelfed

Transparent funding (co-op model? public donations? instance-backed?)

Essentially: a decentralized alternative to cable news, but not algorithm-driven or corporate-owned.

---

2. Amateur / Grassroots Model

Think:

Independent PeerTubers collaborating

Loop creators reporting locally

Lemmy communities functioning as distributed editorial desks

Citizen journalism amplified through federation

This could look more like a decentralized wire service, where stories propagate organically across instances.

---

Alternative Idea: Federated News Aggregator

Instead of building from scratch, what if the Fediverse collaborated with existing independent outlets like:

World Socialist Web Site

Communist.red

Mother Jones

The Nation

Common Dreams

The Intercept

Jacobin

Cpusa.org

(And many others.)

---

Podcasts:

The Deprogram:

https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/The_Deprogram

Revolutionary Left Radio:

https://revleftradio.com/

Guerrilla History:

https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/

etc

---

YouTubers:

https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Hakim

Second Thought:

https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Second_Thought

YUGOPNIK:

https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/YUGOPNIK

r/TankieTheDeprogram

https://www.reddit.com/r/TankieTheDeprogram/s/mJqfxpGOYK

r/TheDeprogarm

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogarm/s/Re7CYFSaSW

Lee Camp-Unredacted Tonight

https://youtube.com/@unredactedtonight

Chris Hedges

https://youtube.com/@chrishedgeschannel

Jimmy Dore

https://youtube.com/@thejimmydoreshow

---

Maybe:

A federated aggregator

A shared ActivityPub-based publishing layer

A “news hub” instance that boosts and categorizes content

Or something similar to the federated streaming marketplace idea I suggested before — but for journalism instead of an Amazon Prime alternative

https://lemmy.world/post/40697282

---

Big Questions

Would a Fediverse news network increase credibility — or fragment it?

How would editorial standards work in a decentralized ecosystem?

Could co-op funding sustain professional reporting?

Would mainstream journalists ever migrate?

Should this aim to compete with centralized media — or complement it?

---

Also: would this risk becoming ideologically siloed? Or would federation naturally diversify perspectives?

Curious what everyone thinks.

Is this unrealistic? Inevitable? Already quietly happening?

---

Link to same post, but on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fediverse/s/wt59TIXVv3

• Conduit
• Conduwuit
• Tuwunel
• Continuwuity

There's too many of them!

Which one would you recommend and why?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/59800690

How to prevent your phone from being opened forcefully

Hello everyone, I'm hoping to gain some insight regarding a privacy concern. I'm always mindful of the possibility that my biometric fingerprint, which I use regularly, could be accessed by someone if I were compelled to use it. For context, I'm not a criminal or particularly tech-savvy, and I'm relatively new to the world of privacy and FOSS applications. I currently use a Samsung phone. I've found that enabling Lockdown mode at night without needing to restart my device prevents anyone from accessing my phone while I sleep. However, my concern stems from a different scenario. Recently, while shopping, I experienced a sudden medical episode and lost consciousness for about ten minutes. During that time, shopkeepers assisted me. I'm worried that in such a vulnerable state, if someone were to misuse my biometric data, they could gain access to all my passwords and personal information, which feels unsafe. While I do value the convenience of biometrics, I'm seeking alternative solutions. Is there a way to prevent my phone from being opened using my fingerprint, even in urgent situations, without completely disabling biometric authentication? Thanks in advance.

Important progress has been made regarding bringing MLS end-to-end encryption to the ActivityPub protocol, with developers already building implementations and providing feedback to a future version of the protocol spec.

most of the instances I could find were filled with liberal centrists who call themselves leftist, and hate actual theory-reading commies.

something politically like lemmy.ml or even like lemmygrad would be perfect.

it also shouldn't be heavily defederated against

I'm part of the discord community for Loops (by Dansup), and earlier this morning, a user mentioned that they made a new Youtube alternative, that's built upon ATProto, but that they plan on adding federation to it.

---

Exact Message:

*Hil made a YouTube alternative built on

the AT Protocol I plan to add the

Fediverse soon but let me know what

you think, it's also local first so your data

is private* https://alu.pics/

---

Discord Server Message

I wrote a little bit of what forms of advocacy on the Fediverse have historically looked like, and contrasted with a few interesting case studies that are trying to move the needle on network growth.

I had a random idea for a potential Fediverse platform: what if someone took the idea and design of Upscrolled, but as a decentralized, federated alternative?

Pro-Palestine protesters, users. etc are flocking to US, given the crackdown towards them on other platforms and sites.

Having a federated alternative to Upscrolled could potentially bring in more users, as well as introduce more people to the Fediverse.

Not to mention that there has already been talk of companies (ie Apple, Google, etc) removing US from their App Stores.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UpScrolled/s/94T1EZznCr

---

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/29/whats-upscrolled-the-app-gaining-popularity-after-tiktoks-us-takeover

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpScrolled

---

EDIT: I made a post on the Upscrolled Subreddit, about whether or not Upscrolled should consider potential federation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UpScrolled/s/j7htK3ST09

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/02/connecting-the-world-through-thriving-online-communities/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42937587

First off, looks like a lot of new people joined the community, so welcome! Let me know if you need anything.

I wanted to get some early feedback on the new Explore (previously called communities) page.

Note: This comparison only really works if you're viewing on web.

This is what the update looks like and this is what it previously looked like

Ie similar to how Lemmy allows users to create instances that are federated with each other, only this Discord alternative's instances wouldn't federate with each other.

Instead, each instance would be a complete silo, although instance owners would be given the option to potentially federate their instance outwards (ie to other federated platforms), if they wish.

Perhaps it could potentially be forked from the already existing Lemmy?

---

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/discord-alternative-search-10000-percent-stoat

https://www.zdnet.com/article/discord-age-verification-requirement/

Recently one of the posts I made got a porn spam comment and I also saw a lot of porn spam in my instance's communites. Also just now I got an abusive DM telling me to kill myself and accusing me of being an astroturfer.

Has anyone else experienced anything like that lately or is it just me?

I've recently made some updates to the ActivityPub Relay I maintain. This includes a regularly updated list of connected instances for monitoring their status and having an easy way to refer to instances for inquiry. I've also added a relay policy which states instances will be banned for featuring bigoted content or having poor admin/uptime.

I definitely have room for some more Mastodon, Misskey, and Pleroma instances.

The relay server itself is located in the east coast of the United States, but open to all regions.

ActivityPub Relay, US East: https://circlewithadot.net/services/aprelay.html

Follow on Mastodon for relay status updates and info: https://mastodon.circlewithadot.net/@cwad

join-lemmy.org regularly crawls all active Lemmy instances to keep the instance list updated. Additionally it also collects data from all Lemmy communities. The data is now publicly available in the following git repository:

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-statistics

See the readme for details about the available data. Interestingly the numbers are quite different from other websites:

	join-lemmy.org	fediverse.observer	fedidb.com
Monthly Active Users	42.170	36.336	50.063
Instances	512	376	446

Here are some ideas what to do with the data:

• Recreate the Lemmymap, graphically showing the connections or defederations between instances.
• Render graphs, which could be added directly to join-lemmy.org (#532).
• Investigate what is causing the different numbers shown above.
• Run various types of analysis, like this one done by @malsadev.
• Build a tool to help users discover interesting and relevant communities.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42450990

Features I can think of:

• a system for stricter content moderation, especially something that would automatically delete NSFW/NSFL posts,
• no direct messaging,
• some kind of tool for moderators to efficiently review content,
• multi-layered access to an account to allow for parental control,
• time management tool that would not be based on the client, but with the session duration calculated through interactions.

Bluesky has verified the account of ICE, which was a step too far for many in the fediverse, wanting to disconnect from the bridge between the networks

The presence itself of ICE on Bluesky is a form of harm, and Bluesky is not well equipped to deal with this new challenge. Making things worse, their verification system is set up to delegate responsibility, but instead they made no use of it