Loops is built for the people, but we haven't forgot the admins.
We've added some pretty innovative features, like Pages that allow you to add/edit/publish rich pages and optionally add them to the main sidebar nav or footer and limit visibility to guests, users or both.
I appreciate your patience while we prepare Loops for you, and you'll soon see, it was worth the wait 🚀
FediCon is a new #Fediverse conference in Vancouver, Canada, taking place on August 1st and 2nd, 2025. So far, there’s an impressive lineup of attendees and speakers!
Sean Tilley and Damon Outlaw are making an effort to get to Canada, and we hope to host an IRL panel there!
Content warning: Just when you thought things were settling down… boom 💥 — the ActivityPub plugin gets another big upgrade. Say hello to version 7.0.0, a release packed with new features, polish, and under-the-hood improvements to help your WordPress site federate smoothe
Just when you thought things were settling down… boom 💥 — the ActivityPub plugin gets another big upgrade. Say hello to version 7.0.0, a release packed with new features, polish, and under-the-hood improvements to help your WordPress site federate smoother, smarter, and more securely than ever.
Let’s dive into what’s new.
Following the Fediverse
We’ve added the initial building blocks for Following support — both sending and managing follow requests for remote actors. It’s not in the UI just yet (we’re rolling it out carefully), but that’s not far away. A big step toward richer, two-way federation. We’ll work with developers of third-party plugins — including those behind Friends and Event Bridge — to migrate their custom follow implementations to this new core feature. This collaboration helps ensure a consistent, reliable follow experience across the ecosystem.
This foundational support for following is also the first step toward a full-featured reader experience right inside WordPress — something we’re excited to keep building toward.
Refined Signature
This release brings support for RFC-9421-style HTTP signatures, both incoming and (optionally) outgoing. That’s a mouthful, but it basically means supporting the latest standard in how we verify and send activities — including a fallback to good old Draft Cavage when needed.
Added basic support for handling remote rejections of follow requests.
Added basic support for RFC-9421 style signatures for incoming activities.
Added initial Following support for Actors, hidden for now until plugins add support.
Added missing “Advanced Settings” details to Site Health debug information.
Added option to auto-approve reactions like likes and reposts.
Added support for namespaced attributes and the dcterms:subject field (FEP-b2b8), as a first step toward phasing out summary-based content warnings.
Added support for the WP Rest Cache plugin to help with caching REST API responses.
Documented support for FEP-844e.
Optional support for RFC-9421 style signatures for outgoing activities, including retry with Draft-Cavage-style signature.
Reactions block now supports customizing colors, borders, box-shadows, and typography.
Support for sending follow requests to remote actors is now in place, including outbox delivery and status updates—UI integration will follow later.
Changed
Comment feeds now show only comments by default, with a new type filter (e.g., like, all) to customize which reactions appear.
Consistent naming of Blog user in Block settings.
hs2019 signatures for incoming REST API requests now have their algorithm determined based on their public key.
Likes, comments, and reposts from the Fediverse now require either a name or preferredUsername to be set when the Discussion option require_name_email is set to true. It falls back to “Anonymous”, if not.
Management of public/private keys for Actors now lives in the Actors collection, in preparation for Signature improvements down the line.
Notification emails for new reactions received from the Fediverse now link to the moderation page instead of the edit page, preventing errors and making comment management smoother.
Plugins now have full control over which Settings tabs are shown in Settings > Activitypub.
Reworked follower structure to simplify handling and enable reuse for following mechanism.
Screen options in the Activitypub settings page are now filterable.
Setting the blog identifier to empty will no longer trigger an error message about it being the same as an existing user name.
Step completion tracking in the Welcome tab now even works when the number of steps gets reduced.
The image attachment setting is no longer saved to the database if it matches the default value.
The welcome page now links to the correct profile when Blog Only mode was selected in the profile mode step.
Unified retrieval of comment avatars and re-used core filters to give access to third-part plugins.
Fixed
Allow interaction redirect URLs that contain an ampersand.
Comments received from the Fediverse no longer show an Edit link in the comment list, despite not being editable.
Fixed an issue where links to remote likes and boosts could open raw JSON instead of a proper page.
Fixed a potential error when getting an Activitypub ID based on a user ID.
HTTP signatures using the hs2019 algorithm now get accepted without error.
Improved compatibility with older follower data.
Inbox requests that are missing an algorithm parameter in their signature no longer create a PHP warning.
Interaction attempts that pass a webfinger ID instead of a URL will work again.
Names containing HTML entities now get displayed correctly in the Reactions block’s list of users.
Prevent storage of empty or default post meta values.
The amount of avatars shown in the Reactions block no longer depends on the amount of likes, but is comment type agnostic.
The command-line interface extension, accidentally removed in a recent cleanup, has been restored.
The image attachment setting now correctly respects a value of 0, instead of falling back to the default.
The Welcome screen now loads with proper styling when shown as a fallback.
Using categories as hashtags has been removed to prevent conflicts with tags of the same name.
When verifying signatures on incoming requests, the digest header now gets checked as expected.
Huge thanks to everyone who contributed code, feedback, tests, or moral support. This community makes the fediverse feel a little more federated with every release. ❤️
Update now, test things out, and let us know how 7.0.0 works for you!
Are Pixelfed planning to integrate with Funkwhale or similar to allow music to be inserted into posts, like IG? It makes sense to me to upload a soundtrack to posts containing photos. @dansup @funkwhale
PT-BR
Será que está nos planos do Pixelfed uma integração com Funkwhale ou afins pra permitir inserção de música nos posts, a exemplo o IG? Pra mim faz sentido carregar uma trilha sonora nos posts contendo fotos.
I pitched this idea to an ISP I was consulting for last year. A free “linktree” style homepage, available with select domain packages. This is my Fediverse version where the user can collect all their platforms together, in one place, as well as create one RSS feed for all their latest activity. #Loops #Pixelfed #PeerTube #Flipboard #WordPress #Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialWeb
Change from one centralized corporate dictatorship to a model of federated individual dictators who can rule their domain, decided who can be guest who can vanish, with who to federate with whom not to ..
This wave of change is like a shock wave from an explosion of hypocrisy
The fediverse belongs to everyone, you cannot "steal" users from a fellow fedi project, as that whole concept of owning users belongs to the corporate silos we aim to replace.
Ghost’s @johnonolan and WordPress’s @pfefferle want to help blogs and long content thrive on the open social web. Meet “the longformers,” who chatted to @mike for the latest edition of Dot Social.
Many people are waiting for a competent TikTok alternative. One that is free from corporate control, privacy concerns, blatant censorship or excessive ads.
This is where Loops comes in. Version 1.0 is coming soon. It’s federated & self-hostable.
I plan on making a video about it once v1.0 drops. Thanks to @dansup for his excellent work!
If you're enjoying the show, please consider supporting our new nonprofit btfree.org at https://givebutter.com/btfree. We're currently running https://tubefree.org which is a moderated peertube open for signups right now!
Looks like I picked the wrong week to start using Friendica.
Crashes across all interfaces, takes forever to load. Maybe, if you collapsed all comments by default, just maybe it wouldn't be crunching so hard. Bluesky integration fails completely. Oh well, seemed perfect for me, in the abstract. I learned quite a lot about the potential. Think I just need to make Mastodon my one stop-shop instead.
Today I have the distinct honor of representing @Mastodon as we are acknowledged by the Digital Public Goods Alliance during the United Nations Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies's Open Source Week.
This news comes at a time when it has never been more imperative for public institutions to communicate directly with their constituents. Rarely in history have we trusted the truth and trusted each other less than we do today. Mastodon provides the infrastructure for organizations to maintain sovereignty over their digital presence, and empowers them to reach out to citizens without algorithmic barriers or paid promotion.
Recognition of Mastodon as a digital public good validates our commitment to building transparent, ethical technology that serves people over profit. Because truly, our values drive everything we do. We believe that true digital freedom comes from the ability of communities to connect, learn, and play together, while preserving each community's right to self-determination.
This recognition belongs to our entire community: every instance admin, developer, and fedizen who believes in building a more human-centered internet. Together, we're showing the world that social media can be transparent, ethical, and community-driven. We're proud to be part of a movement that puts people first and proves that genuine connections flourish when communities have the freedom to govern themselves.
from #Forbes ByEsat Dedezade, Contributor. Esat Dedezade is U.K.-based journalist who covers Big Tech for Forbes Jan 25, 2025, 12:23pm EST
[a very well-written article with a favorable yet realistic angle on the #Fediverse]
"At the heart of these alternative apps lies the Fediverse platform — a portmanteau of "federated" and "universe" that represents a radical reimagining of how social media can work. Unlike traditional platforms where users are locked into isolated ecosystems, the Fediverse operates as an interconnected network of independent servers that communicate with each other through a standard protocol called #ActivityPub."
In this 4-minute video I explain what the #fediverse is to people not familiar with it, mentioning some of its great features and benefits (interoperability, no ads, no surveillance...) and I set it in contrast to the world of Big Tech social platforms. I argue that, with the rise of Big Tech oligarchs and the current political climate, there has never been a better time to join the fediverse.
I hope you will enjoy this video and that you will find it useful (maybe as a tool to introduce your friends, family, colleagues, school administrators, local government officials to it).
The fediverse has truly changed my life, making me a better, more empowered digital citizen. I am endlessly grateful for it, so this is my contribution to the cause ❤️
I am also incredibly thankful for the work of @samaaberg and @patel.riyen who helped me bring my vision to life with their amazing cinematography skills and their assistance throughout the process, providing brilliant feedback to the script / edits from the POV of fedi newbies.
Lastly, I'm thankful for the opportunity I had to premiere the video last week at #FediForum - thank you @j12t and @anca
The video is up on my self-hosted PeerTube instance (thank you @yunohost) and for now it is unlisted as I have no idea how my VPS will hold up. I also included an alternate location in the blog post.
I hope you'll enjoy it! It's been a real labor of love (a month of full time work on it)... I see it as my love letter to the fediverse 💌
Edit/update: THANK YOU for all the people who volunteered to have their avatar show up in the last shot. There were 750+ submissions and only 135 spots - sorry I couldn't include everyone 🥲
When I think of the things I enjoy the most about New Hampshire, I think about the smell of the spring breeze delicately perfumed with the delightful scent of our state flower, the purple lilac. And, she ain't so bad to look at, either!
GreatApe is a public conversations platform for the Fediverse and decentralized social-media (DeSo) — where an audience can listen to your conversation live.
We are very close to doing a public GreatApe release.
Here is what the OpenGraph preview card will more or less look like — when you a URL to a conversation on GreatApe.
(Although the exact look will depend on which front-end app you are using.)
I said I would publish this week, I guess it happened earlier than expected. This is a high-level overview of Postmodern, the #Fediverse platform I hope to someday build. It is the culmination of years of study as the network has continued to evolve.
