It’s been a while since we provided an update, so it’s time to provide a brief update as of recently.
Sakurajima Social and Sakurakey
For a while now, we are running Sharkey with a bunch of additions. With that, we want to differentiate it a little, so you may notice that if you are not logged in, you see the Sharkey logo replaced with Sakurakey (this is not a final design). Since then, we made some notable changes, which includes:
- Improved the safety of search, it shouldn’t bring back unlisted/silent public posts, posts from suspended/silenced users and servers.
- Home is renamed to Silent Public and uses the moon icon. Defederated/Local posts are now denoted with a house.
- Back buttons are back for antennas, list, role detailed views, and tag search.
We had additional media only timelines and made the bubble timeline viewable. However, with the 2024.8.1 update, we have to revert these features temporarily, but they will come back at a later date.
Note that Sakurakey branding is just branding, the server will still identify itself as Sharkey and will receive regular updates from upstream.
Quote Toots come to Sakurajima Mastodon
Perhaps the one of the most requested features is the quote toot feature on Mastodon. While it’s promised in a future release, it will probably be a long time until it becomes a reality. I have been eying just adding a patch that would add this feature and eventually, we did.
Utilizing the updated Quote Toot patches from the Treehouse fork and it’s deployed as of August 22nd. It adds support for Misskey-style quotes for public posts. The only difference is that it’s in the style of a Tumblr “Reblog” where the quoted post appears on top. This is apparently chosen by the Treehouse devs to reduce abuse by having on the bottom and dunking on people (which is against the rules).
Like with Misskey quotes, if Mastodon isn’t running Treehouse/Fedibird or not using Misskey (including forks) or Akkoma, they will appear as links instead. Some clients like Ivory and others already support quoting by sharing the original links, but this adds it properly as they will appear as quotes on Misskey and Akkoma too.
With this, Mastodon is basically on feature parity with Sharkey/Sakurakey. Note that this patch is a stop gap until the feature is officially implemented. Even with the official implementation, part of the patch will still get included for backwards compatibility with viewing of Misskey/Fedibird formatted quotes.
Funding and Future Plans
At the moment, we are meeting the goal of at least having half of the costs covered. As always, the ultimate goal is to have all the monthly costs covered at $105.40 a month, which will be good for sustainability, not entirely necessary (as long the shortfall is less than half after including any passive income I receive), although it will be great if we can as we will be able to expand our services.
As always, only donate if you are able to. You can see the full cost breakdown at the costs page.
If you are planning to donate monthly on Patreon, do not do it in the iOS app as Apple is planning to take a 30% cut, meaning we will receive less. Pledge only in the browser. Paypal and Ko-fi is options as well.
Another way you can support us is through our affiliate links. We added one for CDJapan on the cost page if you want to help support our community.
As for what the future will hold, Sakurajima will turn 2 years old in little over two months. I started this server thinking, maybe I should start a server for Anime/Manga bloggers or focus on Japanese media. I created it one day after Elon bought Twitter. It really shows the severe lack of confidence in the future of Twitter, now called X.
While the Fediverse is still in it’s early stages after it’s explosive growth in 2003, and stagnating a bit, I’m still betting my future on it. Other alternatives like BlueSky, I don’t think it will last in the long term. Because it’s a for profit public-benefit corporation, it needs to turn a profit as it’s burning VC money. Sure, there is a lot of growth on BlueSky due to Brazil banning Twitter, but I’m doubtful it will last as it’s already had scaling issues. Moreover, Social networks to run is generally unprofitable. This is why the goal here is not only recreate the Anime/Japanese media fandom on the Fediverse, but also build out a community, even with traditional forums and providing blog hosting for those to get started.
Another thing that I’m thinking about for next year is moving our servers to a server that we own. As of recently, we are having space concerns. It’s expensive to upgrade storage on a server you don’t own. I’m looking at possibly building a server using my funds and moving to my own hardware. I recently had to disable enhanced search for Sakurajima Social since the search server is using up too much space. By collocating, I can add more storage a lot cheaper, but there is the upfront cost, which will pay off over time.
Lastly, if you need a blog with the Cohost closure and the whole WordPress drama, you can request one at Yoshino Garden. See requirements before applying.
That all I have to say, for now… We will have some kind of anniversary post on October 28th.
The post Sakurajima Update – October 2024 appeared first on Sakurajima.
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