The enthusiast community is happy to present a new version pleroma - a blogging server with text markup written in the Elixir language and using the W3C standardized federated network protocol Activity Pub. It second most common server implementation.
Comparing with the nearest competing project - Mastodonwritten in Ruby and running on the same ActivityPub network, Pleroma boasts a smaller footprint and fewer external dependencies, making it cheaper to maintain and run on more configurations. At the same time, this is not at the expense of functionality, on the contrary, in Pleroma there are much fewer restrictions and more customizable options, while in Mastodon it will most often be hardcoded. What's more, Pleroma implements the Mastodon API, allowing you to use Mastodon's client applications and even its web interface, which comes alongside Pleroma's web interface.
For users of Twitter and other proprietary centralized services, Pleroma may be of interest with a configurable limit in 5000 characters per post default, text formatting in Markdown/BBCode/HTML, extended profile, many interfaces - both in the classic style and Tweet Deck, custom emoji and stickers theme engine interface and more. But an important feature is the nature of federated networks: you choose a server with the rules and audience that you like, or organize your own, with complete control over the data on it, without depending on a single point of failure.
It is worth noting the development of a Twitter-like interface for Pleroma - Soapbox, characterized by simplicity, minimalism and performance.
The main feature of the release is adding a federated chat, which also works under the ActivityPub protocol! It's available as private messages, where attachment uploads and custom emoji work just like regular posts. There are plans for a group version of chats and E2E encryption. This is not the first iteration of real-time messages. Before that, the implementation of a simple centralized chat was already added, located in the corner of the interface, where any server user could write and everyone else would see it. Integration with the MongooseIM XMPP server has also been added, but without the ability to use XMPP directly from the Pleroma interface.
Simultaneously with the release of chats in Pleroma, the brutalist and ultra-minimalistic ActivityPub server acquired the same functionality. Honk, written in Go. If the statuses in Honk are called "honks", then instant messages are called "chonks". Honk-honk!
And in the context of other changes:
- options for hiding the feed of posts and user profiles from public access;
- the ability to send a request for permission to register;
- tools to install interfaces and configure them by default instead of Pleroma-FE;
- automatic synchronization of user emoji with servers approved for this;
- posts from the past will no longer suddenly pop up in the feed of the current posts (this is not a bug);
- restructuring the interface of the feeds of posts, now they are combined into one tab;
- performance improvement.
Plans for future releases:
- even more performance optimizations;
- federation using a WebSocket connection;
- the ability for users to choose their own interface;
- generation of previews for attachments (now they are not available and this is a significant load on traffic);
- tooltips for hovering over the user's profile;
- improvements to the theme engine and settings page;
- ...
- GROUPS (this is the most anticipated and desired functionality since GNU Social, the predecessor of Pleroma).
Screenshot server - sect.sunbutt.faith. On root domain there is a wiki with updated information about federated networks.
Also in the context of the news, one cannot fail to mention Google's actions regarding federated networks: Google sent warnings to Mastodon client developers to address the issue of incitement to violence and discrimination. Developers have 7 days to fix the problem. The same warning came to the Japanese developer.
Source: linux.org.ru