Updating README
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Darius Kazemi
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README.md
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README.md
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========
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# Hometown: a Mastodon fork
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[][releases]
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[][circleci]
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[][code_climate]
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[][crowdin]
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[][docker]
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<img width="300" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/7005/26777339042_b32cef4e1f_b.jpg" alt="photo of a village of stone huts nestled in a lush green valley">
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[releases]: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/releases
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[circleci]: https://circleci.com/gh/tootsuite/mastodon
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[code_climate]: https://codeclimate.com/github/tootsuite/mastodon
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[crowdin]: https://crowdin.com/project/mastodon
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[docker]: https://hub.docker.com/r/tootsuite/mastodon/
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Photo by [Joana Mujollari](https://www.flickr.com/photos/141654969@N04/26777339042/), CC0 / Public Domain.
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Mastodon is a **free, open-source social network server** based on ActivityPub. Follow friends and discover new ones. Publish anything you want: links, pictures, text, video. All servers of Mastodon are interoperable as a federated network, i.e. users on one server can seamlessly communicate with users from another one. This includes non-Mastodon software that also implements ActivityPub!
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Mastodon is a **free, open-source social network server** based on ActivityPub. This is *not* the official version of Mastodon; this is a separate version (i.e. a fork) maintained by [Darius Kazemi](https://friend.camp/@darius). For more information on Mastodon, you can see the [official website](https://joinmastodon.org) and the [upstream repo](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon).
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Click below to **learn more** in a video:
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Hometown is a light weight fork of Mastodon. This fork is based on the principle of: minimum code change for maximum user experience change.
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[][youtube_demo]
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Hometown is launching with a few key differences from Mastodon.
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[youtube_demo]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPSbNdBmWKE
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* Local only posting (aka posts that never federate)
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* Accepting more content types "natively", like in-line reading of full articles (behind a cut for length)
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* Better list management
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* Some accessibility features set to default
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## Navigation
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Those are the only changes! They are pretty minor in terms of the source code involved, but they drastically change the experience of being on Mastodon. I'll explain each of these in more detail now.
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- [Project homepage 🐘](https://joinmastodon.org)
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- [Support the development via Patreon][patreon]
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- [View sponsors](https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors)
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- [Blog](https://blog.joinmastodon.org)
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- [Documentation](https://docs.joinmastodon.org)
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- [Browse Mastodon servers](https://joinmastodon.org/#getting-started)
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- [Browse Mastodon apps](https://joinmastodon.org/apps)
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## Local only posting
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[patreon]: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon
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Mastodon right now is designed to get your messages out to the entire fediverse. This is great, but there is a huge need for more private communities. And in a federated network I think it makes the most sense for your home server to be that community (hence "Hometown").
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## Features
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**In the context of Hometown, local only posting is a per-post security option that lets you set whether that post can federate out to other servers or not.**
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<img src="https://docs.joinmastodon.org/elephant.svg" align="right" width="30%" />
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I've been running Friend Camp, a Mastodon fork with local only posting, for about a year. Being able to have conversations with people on your server that don't federate is a hugely liberating thing. It allows inside jokes to develop. It allows people the freedom to complain about things that they wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable leaving a trusted server (cops, employers, etc). It also lets us do things like have a server-wide movie night where we flood the local timeline with posts about the movie, and it doesn't pollute the rest of the Fediverse.
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**No vendor lock-in: Fully interoperable with any conforming platform**
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This feature is based on [the work of Renato Lond](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/8427), which is itself based on a feature in the [Mastodon Glitch Edition](https://glitch-soc.github.io/docs/) fork.
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It doesn't have to be Mastodon, whatever implements ActivityPub is part of the social network! [Learn more](https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is-the-future/)
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## Reading more content types
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**Real-time, chronological timeline updates**
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Mastodon is microblogging software, meant for Twitter-style shortform posting.
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See the updates of people you're following appear in real-time in the UI via WebSockets. There's a firehose view as well!
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Hometown is microblogging for _writing_, but its goal is to accept many content types for _reading_. So while I don't plan to let Hometown users publish massive blog posts, I would like your Hometown instance to be your one-stop shop for viewing all sorts of things on the Fediverse.
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**Media attachments like images and short videos**
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For Hometown this means if you subscribe to a service that sends out `Article` objects over ActivityPub (such as a blog on [Write As](https://write.as)), then those full articles render in your home timeline, behind a cut for length. Also, Hometown will render a variety of rich text like _italic_ and **bold**.
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Upload and view images and WebM/MP4 videos attached to the updates. Videos with no audio track are treated like GIFs; normal videos are looped - like vines!
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Click on this GIF for a brief video demo:
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**Safety and moderation tools**
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<img src="http://tinysubversions.com/pics/hometown-article.gif" alt="Video demo of someone clicking 'read article' on an incoming article post, which then renders a full article.">
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Private posts, locked accounts, phrase filtering, muting, blocking and all sorts of other features, along with a reporting and moderation system. [Learn more](https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/07/cage-the-mastodon/)
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This is based on rich text work by [Thibaut Girka](https://sitedethib.com), and my own work on `Article` support.
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**OAuth2 and a straightforward REST API**
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### It's more than just reading more stuff
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Mastodon acts as an OAuth2 provider so 3rd party apps can use the REST and Streaming APIs, resulting in a rich app ecosystem with a lot of choice!
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Reading more content types also helps make the fediverse better. ActivityPub supports all kinds of content, but most ActivityPub servers shoehorn all their content into `Note` because that's the type that Mastodon treats as first-class. This has important implications for the fediverse and also on your day to do user experience.
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## Deployment
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Take the "quote tweet" debate for example.
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**Tech stack:**
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Twitter has a feature called "quote tweeting" that lets you embed what someone else tweets, with your own comment right next to it. It's really useful for provide commentary in context, like this, where I point people to a sale and they can read both my comment on the sale and the original tweet about the sale in one post:
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- **Ruby on Rails** powers the REST API and other web pages
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- **React.js** and Redux are used for the dynamic parts of the interface
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- **Node.js** powers the streaming API
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<img width="600" src="http://tinysubversions.com/pics/quote-tweet.png" alt="An example of a quote tweet from Twitter.">
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**Requirements:**
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But it's also open to abuse with people quote-tweeting things they disagree with to encourage a pile-on from their followers. There's been a lot of debate among Mastodon users as to whether the good of this feature outweighs the bad. So far, Mastodon has avoided implementing quoting.
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- **PostgreSQL** 9.5+
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- **Redis**
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- **Ruby** 2.4+
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- **Node.js** 8+
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What does this have to do with content types? Well, if we support an `Article` content type and a `Note` content type, we can support quoting for an `Article` but not for a `Note`. In practice this means that you can quote blog posts and news articles, but you can't quote a quick personal microblog note.
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The repository includes deployment configurations for **Docker and docker-compose**, but also a few specific platforms like **Heroku**, **Scalingo**, and **Nanobox**. The [**stand-alone** installation guide](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/administration/installation/) is available in the documentation.
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## Better list management
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A **Vagrant** configuration is included for development purposes.
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If Hometown is going to be a universal reader, you're going to need better control over organizing your feeds than mainline Mastodon provides.
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## Contributing
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### Exclusive lists
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Mastodon is **free, open source software** licensed under **AGPLv3**.
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My first plan is to introduce a new kind of _exclusive list_. Right now if you add an account to your "friends I like" list in Mastodon, posts from people on that list appear on that list. But they also appear on your home timeline, and maybe you don't want that! You'd rather treat your "friends I like" list as your "real" home timeline, and then check your home timeline when you're bored.
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You can open issues for bugs you've found or features you think are missing. You can also submit pull requests to this repository, or submit translations using Weblate. To get started, take a look at [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md). If your contributions are accepted into Mastodon, you can request to be paid through [our OpenCollective](https://opencollective.com/mastodon).
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Or another case: I might have all the blogs I read in one list, but I only check it on Saturdays when I have time to read things. In that case I don't want updates from those blogs clogging up my home timeline.
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**IRC channel**: #mastodon on irc.freenode.net
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## Better accessibility defaults
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Look, right now this pretty much just means that we underline hyperlinks by default. I'm of course open to implementing other obviously beneficial accessibilty defaults that Mastodon itself doesn't implement.
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## Hometown is still 99.999% Mastodon
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I don't intend to stray very far from mainline Mastodon with this fork. If you want something that provides a ton of new features and widgets and stuff, the [Mastodon Glitch Edition](https://glitch-soc.github.io/docs/) fork is a wondrous kitchen sink of major and minor tweaks.
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Part of why I don't want to stray far from mainline Mastodon is that this project is going to be just me for the foreseeable future, and I'd like to keep it up to date with new Mastodon versions as easily as possible. The less code I change from Mastodon, the easier that is. Hence the principle of "minimum code change for maximum user experience change."
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## Versioning
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Hometown follows Mastodon versioning, so Hometown v2.9.2 is up to date with Mastodon v2.9.2.
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## License
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Copyright (C) 2016-2019 Eugen Rochko & other Mastodon contributors (see [AUTHORS.md](AUTHORS.md))
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Copyright (C) 2016-2019 Eugen Rochko and other Mastodon contributors; see [AUTHORS.md](AUTHORS.md).
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This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
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