Welcome everyone!

First of all, what is a 'Yarning Circle'? Well it's a place to have a yarn, a conversation, where everyone can speak as equals. I try to host them every so often to provide an update on the instance and where we’re at, while providing a platform to listen to your feedback.

🌟 Community Highlights 🌟

• !commvscomm@quokk.au - Watch Markov Chains engage in simulated Threadiverse discussion as they emulate well known communities
• !fediverse@quokk.au - Our very own community for Fediverse related news, discussions, and insights.
• !quotes@quokk.au - As the name implies, a place to view and share your favourite quotes.

🧑‍💻 What's Up? 🧑‍💻

Wow, so much has happened. There’s been a lot of drama, which I will cover in its own section further below for those who don’t want to worry about such things.

Other than that we had our first Lemmyvision participation, we submitted the song ‘Bars’ by Mudrat, a hard-hitting Australian rap song about media censorship and Palestine. It was a close vote, due to a very limited number of participants. You can still vote in the finals if you wish to join in the remainder of the event.

We released Threadirator, a tool to help promote new communities across PieFed & Lemmy. Along with what I hope is a working bot to track community growth across the Threadiverse. These tools will help PieFed, whereas others have a strong Lemmy focus often not catering to this platform.

@Deceptichum@quokk.au has informed me they are intending to leave Quokk.au due to ongoing drama, and are slowly winding down their posting. We will be looking for new moderators to help manage their comms once they do. Please reach out to me if you’d like to apply for any of those positions.

We have hit 100 active members over the last month, showing a clear trend of growth and engagement. Thank you all for helping make this instance such a great place to be.

The White House has declared radical-transgender people and anarchists as potential enemies of the state. Who knows, maybe in the near future Quokk.au will be banned in the USA.

We have our own Matrix Channel, it's pretty quiet but feel free to join.

I created a new default theme for the instance based on Pine-Rose, along with a new logo.

The report page for community moderators has been updated to provide more helpful information at a glance.

spoiler

We now support donations

🍿 What's the Tea (Drama)? 🍿

What started with a ban of one of our users for German language concerns around the use of the word Nazi, has spiralled into a multi-instance issue where threats of defederation against smaller instances (us, and others) was thrown around to enforce compliance. The FAF has taken steps to reduce the tensions and by removing administrators, reversing bans, and censoring posts. Sadly this has only been met with increased hostility.

Promptly following this was the beginning of a targeted campaign of misinformation and disinformation. First Quokk.au and dbzedr0 were falsely accused of being infiltrated by Neo-Nazis. Luckily this was proven false after some time, but as the saying goes "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." and the damage from this will probably never be undone despite the truth coming out. It does not help that said post was allowed to stay up for hours after it was proven to be manipulated, giving the original post more time to be seen and believed.

A few days later, the lead developer of PieFed seems to have started posting cherry-picked stats to discredit dbzer0 (and the FAF) as ‘ban happy’ for the actions of a sole moderator - one who personally upset this developer by incorrectly labelling them as a ‘ Zionist’ in the modlogs (This has now been rectified by dbzer0).

This was followed up again with another post presenting false and misleading information around the usage of an AI tool to assist moderators in browsing users comment history for patterns of behaivour (Zionism/Genocide Denial in this case), by claiming it was a secretive automated tool that banned users when it simply presented a text file for moderators to view. Please note, this tool has not been used on Quokk.au and I personally do not plan on using it myself, but I will not take issue if any moderators wish to make their job a bit easier.

This has now culminated in PieFed.social’s admin and lead developer making the choice to ‘hide’ our instance from their PieFed instance chooser - Being the flagship instance, this will drastically reduce our visibility to new users and harm our instances future growth. In return I have not ‘hidden’ PieFed.social from our own instance chooser as I do not personally feel the desire to stoop to such a petty low. Depending on how much more we are attacked in the future, I may reverse this decision however.

🧶 Yarn 🧶

We're continuing to grow, and it's great to see so many active users contributing to make this instance a lively place to be. So thank you all for your posts and comments.

If I could make a request, I would love to see more communities being created - if there's anything you're passionate about please don't hesitate to make it so. The more content and places for our community to grow, the more we can help the Fediverse become a replacement for the corporate web.

Is there anything you would like to share?

A while I made a Matrix room, intended primarily for communicating on the odd chance the instance is down. I remembered recently that I forgot to share this with everyone.

Feel free to join and have a chat ❤️

We were close to being defederated from LW due to their flippant administration regarding one of our users criticising their host organisation. It is for this reason that I think it is important we band together with the rest of the FAF and other sites who are joining this defensive alliance.

This is not a call to defederate from Lemmy.world, rather stating that if anyone of us is targeted that we will respond together.

Please comment below with your thoughts on the matter.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/67858553

Join the Pledge to boycott lemmy.world! [GenAI]

Note: Judging by the comments, a lot of people are obviously not reading the post and are instead assuming we are calling for defederation of lemmy.world. That is not the case, and in fact the opposite is true. LW already temporarily defederated anarchist.nexus once, and the evidence suggests Mr Kaplan is now pushing for full defederation of all the FAF instances. We are trying to build a coalition of instances that will agree to defederate from lemmy.world IF Kaplan goes ahead with the defederation. Apologies if you weren't aware of the context.

🏴‍☠️ Hoist the Black Flag: Pledge to Boycott Lemmy World!

... if Lemmy World dares to defederate from any ship in the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla - https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/, https://anarchist.nexus/, and https://quokk.au/.

Mateys, we can’t let a mega‑instance captain bully the rest of the fleet just because their ship’s bigger. If Lemmy World tries to throw the FAF overboard, we’re calling for a show of solidarity: a fediverse blockade of Lemmy World in response, until the landlubbers see reason (i.e., there is an acceptable change in their leadership and/or this policy).

This is about mutual aid, not mutiny - standing together so no single admin gets to rule the seas unchallenged. A united armada of smaller instances can absolutely blunt Lemmy World’s outsized influence (and, let’s be honest, their ego).

☠️ A word to the captains: before hoisting colours or locking in a course, we ask ye to let your crew have their say. Run a poll, open the deck for discussion, and listen to the voices aboard your vessel. These seas belong to all of us, and decisions that shape our fediverse should be made together, not from the captain’s quarters alone.

If other captains be keen to chart this course with us, drop anchor and make the pledge public in the comments. The more hands on deck, the harder it is to sink any one of us. Let us know if you are holding a vote!

dbzer0 and AN members can vote on this pledge in !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com, and quokk.au will be holding their own vote.

🏴‍☠️ Solidarity forever, and fair winds to the Flotilla!

I was reading an external thread only to waste time troubleshooting why I couldn't retrive the comment, when our modlog is missing the reason they are banned here.

If our instance will ban specific users from external instances, I would love to have a /c/ or /metalog where we can read the reasons specific users were banned from our instance. This is general request, and not a sole external user I used as an example. It just felt weird I couldn't even find out why that user was banned, and if it's a glitch in piefed or something. Going forward, I would love accountability for those instances, even whole /c/s we will ban and defed with.

I apologize in advance if my English is bad. I am still getting my ropes up regarding piefed.

Read the post here

Lemmyvision 3 has been announced and @Deceptichum@quokk.au has suggested we enter the contest. So let's do exactly that. This will be Quokk.au's first time entering, and I'd love everyone to have a say in what we put forward.

Submissions end on the 3/5 (or 5/3 for any Americans) - so to make sure we get in on time, I will cut our voting off on 2/5 (5/2).

Please add your submissions below, the highest up-voted song will be our entry (I will not count downvotes).

As you have no doubt most likely noticed, the instance has been running very slow lately. I've made a few changes behind the scenes, and setup up Anubis to help deter any bot scrapes. Fingers crossed this is all enough to fix the issues.

If you continue to experience problems after this point, please let me know below.

Edit: I've also re-opened registration, but now requiring email verification and captcha. I the harassing user continues, I'll swap to manual authorisation/questionnaire.

Does the server need a reboot or something? It's been unbearably slow for me since this morning.

Note: I am copying this here as we are a FAF Companion Instance - as such we are not expected to follow their federation/defederation list, however Quokk.au has already been defederated from feddit.org for nearly a year due to their Zionism.

This has been a contentious topic, sparking much debate but following the Governance post (feddit.org's Zionist bar problem: community ban(s) vote), the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla has decided to fully defedeate from from Feddit.org.

It follows a model of BDS from pro-Zionist/Israeli sources, showing that views such as genocide denial are not welcome in a polite society. This further backs up the FAF's strong commitment to not supporting pro-Zionism as with its Golden Rule #8

Users had expressed some reservations around losing access to feddit.org communities, some of which have dbzer0 hosted alternatives such as !europe@lemmy.dbzer0.com, !buyfromeu@lemmy.dbzer0.com. Others can be found across the wider fediverse such as !buyeuropean@feddit.uk.

But wait, isn't it un-Anarchist to not support complete free speech? Not at all my dear friend. Voluntary association is a core Anarchist principle, and as such exercising the freedom to stop associating with others is part of that. If the Feddit.org admin team decides to change their stance of support for Israel, perhaps the community may vote to refederate in the future.

Hey,

I've had a look at !epsteinfiles@lemmy.world and noticed, there are a lot of posts missing when I browse from this instance. Recent, and not so recent posts alike by various users from across different instances, where nothing shows in the modlog. The instances also don't appear to be blocked. I checked my filters too, and the about page of this instance, but didn't notice anything related.

Does anybody know why, and could tell me please? Thank you.

As the title says.

Their instance is dying off and alternative communities are growing on other instances, this is as good a time as any to make the push and help encourage content and users to move away from there.

Not to mention the only reason we are federated with them now is because we switched to PieFed which federates with them by default.

Welcome everyone!

First of all, what is a 'Yarning Circle'? Well it's a place to have a yarn, a conversation, where everyone can speak as equals.

🌟 Community Highlights 🌟

• !historygallery@quokk.au - Historical artworks.
• !mop@quokk.au - Memes of Production: Left wing memes, a lot of them.
• !anarchy_anz@quokk.au - ANZ Anarchy: A place for news and information about Anarchy & Anarchist groups across the Australia-New Zealand region.

🧑‍💻 What's Up? 🧑‍💻

We had our big vote and the result was a 1-vote tie breaker towards not joining the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla.

In saying that, as it was so close we are going to become 'Companions' of the FAF, which is a much looser affiliation based on shared values. We will be copying many of their existing rules, but are open to modification if our members wish to see changes. We are invited to participate in FAF votes for some rules outside of things like defederations/bans - which we will not be copying on our end, meaning we won't be opening up to HexBear and such.

We will also be able to use the FAF Matrix Channel, where I will be setting up a room just for Quokk.au members. This should be handy to reach myself if the site is down, or just for a general chitchat in real time.

Basically this is all the good aspects of the FAF without any of the concerns expressed by users.

We are also exploring alternative front-ends to access Quokk.au, if you could please take a look at:

• blorp.piefed.zip
• photon.piefed.zip

And let us (me) know which you would like to see (or suggest some others if you know of them)

🧶 Yarn 🧶

We're continuing to grow, and it's great to see so many active users contributing to make this instance a lively place to be. So thank you all for your posts and comments.

If I could make a request, I would love to see more communities being created - if there's anything you're passionate about please don't hesitate to make it so. The more content and places for community to grow, the more we can help the Fediverse become a replacement for the corporate web.

Is there anything you would like to share?

I love some of the features Piefed has, and like not tacitly supporting tankies, but I absolutely cannot stand Piefed's web UI. The inbox is almost impossible to work with, and there's something just a little awkward about basic post comment pages.

So first, have people made good alternative front-ends for Piefed? And if so, does Quokkau have support for any of them?

Bonus question: any recommendations for an Android app? I've been using Summit, but it has a pretty awful user interface in almost an identical way to the biggest problems with the Piefed web.

Given the .au TLD, I assume this is an Aus-based instance, and therefore will need to comply with it, legally. Obviously it might be possible to just stay under the radar and not get caught, but the approach aussie.zone is using is a pretty good one, mostly relying on circumstantial evidence like "the person remembers a cultural event from the '80s" or "a photo of the back of someone's head while driving, with their username displayed on it".

A few hours ago we started running into some federation issues, with content not sending/receiving. I believe it's sorted now, and over the next hour or two should hopefully catch up to date with he rest of the Fediverse. Please let me know if you experience any issues going forward.

Welcome everyone!

First of all, what is a ' Yarning Circle '? Well it's a place to have a yarn, a conversation, in a circle where everyone can speak equally. In this case we're here to discuss the state of the instance and it's future. Something I hope to host monthly going forward. Oh and thanks to slrpnk.net for letting me steal their formatting of community posts.

🌟 Community Highlights 🌟

• !lll@quokk.au - little left library: "A community to share leftist literature", a cozy little place to find something to read on a rainy day.

• !y2k_memes@quokk.au - Y2K Memes: This makes me feel old.

• !90s_memes@quokk.au - 90s Memes: This makes me feel older.

• .ml de-fed?

🧑‍💻 What's Up? 🧑‍💻

Prior to switching over to PieFed from Lemmy, Quokk.au was de-federated from the 'triad', as it stands with the move we are now re-federated with lemmy.ml. In the near future I would like to hold a vote to decide if you would like to continue to remain as such or move towards de-federating them. Please let me know your thoughts.

• I've started working on a few small customisations to PieFed. Mostly centered around the web interface, changing layout.
• New (WIP) themes such as a replication of old.reddit and a PHPBB inspired theme.

🧶 Yarn 🧶

Please let me know how you're finding your experience so far with Quokk.au, and if there is anything I can to do help improve it for you.

Update: Everything seems to be in order, the CPU is running nearly 100% to catch up on everything that's been missed in the last 24 hours so expect it to take some time to catch up.

We've run into a slight issue since updating, apparently nothing is getting sent out from the instance. Hopefully this should be cleared up ASAP. Apologies for any issues this may cause.

We're running the stable branch, so it's nice to get some updates!

Highlights of 1.1

Most instances have been on the dev branch anyway so they will already have these:

You can set a default comment sort, for when viewing a post.

LDAP support, so people can use their piefed.social login for chat.piefed.social and translate.piefed.social

More Ajax throughout, creating a more fluid UI.

Better notifications, with types and which are removed if the post they're notifying about is deleted.

Private votes are just non-federated votes.

Popup tooltips all over the place.

New login methods:

• Mastodon
• Discord

Hashtags in community side pane, e.g. this community

Daily maintenance tasks execute in parallel, which is a lot faster.

Batched ActivityPub federation that will significantly improve federation performance between PieFed instances

Filter out posts based on a keyword search of community name.

Reduce deadlocks and improve DB performance

• use redis for locking.
• extensive refactors to stop connection leakage.

Load comments using ajax when there are > 100 on a post, making the initial loading of a post quicker.

Automatic post archiving of old posts, to slow DB growth and reduce operating costs. Post body and comments are saved in S3 as JSON instead of in the DB.

Show/hide text inside password fields, making confusion during login less common.

Mods can lock comments and their children.

A lot of improvements to scheduled posts.

Several improvements in the markdown to html parsing.

Upgrade to Flask 3.

Swagger for API developers (in progress).

API: new json serialization lib that is 10x faster.

API: Get topics & feeds endpoints. Replacement for comments/list endpoint.

Things planned for 1.2

An instance chooser during registration - no separate instance choosing website needed

Optional post approval process for mods

Communities populated by a RSS feed.

Remind me

AI content filter

Event post type which federates with Friendica and Mobilizon

Relevant readings (i couldnt find these posts from here i have no idea why)

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37870631

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/44067267

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/44422088

In the midst of the recent issues and drama related to Feddit.org I have recently created a replacement to the Europe community which is hosted on Feddit. For people who still want access to a Europe community even though quokk.au has defederated feddit I suggest checking out !europe@lemmy.dbzer0.com. It's not as big but I hope with time it can grow and become more active. If you have any interest I urge you to check it out.

Hello everyone,

Wanting to inform you all that this instance will be undergoing some maintenance and hosting changes tomorrow. It shouldn't take too long.