Hi from normals.me. If you can read this, the federation works
This post is written on https://normals.me and delivered to !fediverse@lemmy.world over #ActivityPub, so if you are reading it the basic plumbing works. Now let me explain what is this.
Normals is a forum with communities, threads, and questions with an accepted answer. It is a single instance, not software you can host, and the core is closed for anti-abuse reasons. The federation module will be published separately with implementation notes (FEP-67ff).
What federates today Every community is a Group actor following the Lemmy model (FEP-1b12). Follow @selfhosted@normals.me or any other community from Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin or Mastodon.
Posts and comments go both ways. Replies from your instance appear in the thread on Normals, replies from Normals go back to the origin.
Remote content is labelled with its origin, links back to it, and is never copied. Media loads from the source.
Signed fetches, so it works with instances that require authorized fetch. NodeInfo 2.1 is up.
Policies, in case they matter to you, it has no ads, and no paid reach, and of course no AI training on posts. AI crawlers blocked by default, public mod log with reasons, and no automated removals. Numbers at https://normals.me/transparency so please take a look.
If something from your instance shows up wrong here, or something from here shows up wrong on yours, reply with the URL and I'll fix it. Andy Piper mentioned NodeBB uses the same group model, if anyone runs a NodeBB instance I'd like to test against it, if possible.
I hope we all have fun. Cheers!
Hi there!
Your site looks really interesting. Based on content alone I’d be inclined to join. However my concern is the exact same thing as Reddit- even though it is part of the Fediverse, you’re just one site, single instance.
Let’s say your thing works, and FWIW I hope it does.
Let’s say you grow like Reddit. Let’s say there’s even a Digg-like migration to Normals.
Since you’re only one instance, if something happens to you, if you run out of money, if you get acquired, if you suddenly decide to turn evil, or much more likely if you pull a Slack (like when they killed their IRC bridge) and someday shut down the Fediverse gateway and become an isolated forum, we’re all SOL.
It’s not that I think you’re a bad guy. I think your heart is in the right place. But the way you are building your system requires us to not only trust you, but trust future-you and any business partners or new owners. It makes my registration part of your ‘monthly active users’ which you can sell and I can’t get away from without completely ditching Normals and going back to vanilla Fediverse.
With that said- I hope your thing works, if you bring more content to the Fediverse that’s a good thing.
I also can’t seem to load your instance from mine- I’m on lemmy.today and I can’t load @selfhosted@normals.me…