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QOTO's Funkwhale instance has now been upgraded to the latest version (1.1.2). Enjoy!

One small issue existing users will need to fix. The avatar's feature is new and existing users will have a broken avatar image shown in the upper left when logged in as a broken image link. To fix go into your settings and delete your avatar (do not upload a new one just yet). Then log out and back in. You should now see that the image is no longer broken but replaced with a generic avatar.

If anyone has any other issues please let @freemo know

@QOTO@groups.qoto.org

QOTO's instance of Peertube has just been upgraded, we are now on the latest version of v3.2.x. Everything appears to be working but if you have any problems please reach out to @freemo.

Our Peertube instance is open to everyone to use according to our rules, registration is open. However you must contact a qoto administrator to be given upload rights (which we generally grant). To register or use the service the link is as follows.

video.qoto.org

@QOTO@groups.qoto.org

I spent some time last night improving the spaces and our room directory.

I've added several rooms from different fediverse associated instances to the :qoto.org space.

I have also added about half a dozen room servers related to other instances and servers to our room search. So should be easy for you to find most rooms anywhere in the federated universe.

Again: you can join this space (or the others in the linked post) from any matrix user on any server. If you dont have a user you are free to register one on QOTO at: element.qoto.org

@QOTO

🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱  
So I setup a list of maybe 30 highly active matrix rooms organized into Matrix Spaces on the QOTO Matrix server (though you can access them from an...

So I setup a list of maybe 30 highly active matrix rooms organized into Matrix Spaces on the QOTO Matrix server (though you can access them from any spaces enabled matrix server).

Just login to your existing matrix account on any server, or register for a free one at element.qoto.org (registration open to everyone). Then join any of the following spaces (make sure you turn on spaces in your config under labs first).

Please let me know if you have any rooms you'd like to suggest to be added to any of the below spaces. Also, feel free to create your own space and share it.

:qoto.org - Rooms related to QOTO itself

:qoto.org - Various rooms from matrix servers that have a fediverse hosted as part of the same community.

:qoto.org - A collection of general topic STEM rooms like Electronics, Physics, Math, etc.

:qoto.org - Rooms specific to Countries, towns or regions around the world.

:qoto.org - Channels for various open-source projects

-distros_space:qoto.org - Rooms for various linux distribtuion flavors.

@QOTO

Matrix servers that have it enabled (including QOTO's matrix server) allow for ephimerial rooms. That is, you can set your messages in a room to automatically delete after a certain point in time. Anyone who is the admin/mod of a room can set it. That, combined with the end-to-end encryption and identity verification really makes this a win on privacy.

Please let me know if anyone needs help.

If you want to sign up or log in you can go to: element.qoto.org

Everyone is welcome to signup, you dont need to have a QOTO account. You can also login as a guest if you wish.

@QOTO

To anyone out there hosting a server of any scale, interested in connecting with the QOTO matrix server?

What I am proposing is I will add any Matrix server on the fediverse into our configuration under room directories on the condition the other server adds QOTO as well. This wont change anything functionally except to allow the server to show up int he drop down for matrix servers when searching for servers to join. It just makes sense to have the various fediverse servers show up in that list by default.

@QOTO

We have now added a new service to supplement the QOTO Matrix chat server; a dedicated Element web client with a ton of features baked in the standard Element web client doesnt have.

Just go to element.qoto.org and you can register for, or sign into, a QOTO matrix account.

Please reach out to @freemo If you have any questions or problems.

@QOTO@groups.qoto.org .

We are happy to announce a new QOTO service, our brand new matrix server!

Registration is open to everyone.

To either login or register a new account use any compatible Matrix/Riot client (like app.element.io/ ). When doing so you will have to set the home server to "matrix.qoto.org" (it is usually set to matrix.org). However keep in mind once logged in your username will be @user:qoto.org, as the matrix.* prefix is dropped. Similarly any rooms you create will be :qoto.org.

The best part is this service is decentralized and federated so you can join any matrix room on any other server. Even cooler you can join rooms on servers that arent federated at all like IRC or gitter.im. So you really can connect to almost any chat server out there all from one identity and server.

**NOTE**: We will also be bringing up a client, likely the same client run at app.element.io, for the added security. It wont change anything and you can switch clients once we have that up if you want. You can also download the client and use it as a desktop app.

@QOTO@groups.qoto.org

WOOT! Our GitLab instance just got approval for another year of free ultimate license (normally costs 100$ per person, per month).

@QOTO

As for costs... the last year the total cost to run QOTO was **11,384.43$**. However I recently paid to reserve the instances instead of spot instances. So I expect the next year to be about 25% cheaper.

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Attached a picture of the QOTO swarm's resources for those who are curious.

Some interesting facts about the cluster for those who are curious:

* Runs as a docker swarm, so easily scales as needed and services can move between computers in the cluster.
* Runs on a 7 computer cluster.
* Utilizes only about 5% at most of its CPU potential
* CPU has burst capability, so can go well beyond 100% for momentary high loads.
*Utilizes 33% of the memory (this includes caching). Almost all of the memory is from Gitlab.
* Requires half a terrabyte of on-disk size, with an additional 2 TB for used currently as shared disks.
* Supports 12 different services right now: fediverse-bots, discourse, wikijs, funkwhale, gitlab, 5-node load balancer, nextcloud, peertube, piwig, qoto-mastodon groups server, and two different monitoring tools.
* These 12 services run as 60 different interconnected docker containers spread across the cluster.

@QOTO

We are currently upgrading all of the services. Our configuration allows for no-downtime upgrades, so most users shouldnt notice anything (except for their services suddenly upgrading). However be aware downtime is possible if things dont go well.

So far all database and Redis back-end services have been upgraded to the latest. Next we will be working on the front-end services. This may be over the course of several days. We will announce when upgrades are complete but in the meantime if anything goes down, don't panic, we will be back.

@QOTO@groups.qoto.org

I have recently uncovered a user who seems to be opening temporary accounts at QOTO, blocking all the moderators so we dont see their posts and then posting high offensive material (nazi imagery, transphobic and hateful derogatory content, etc) and then proceeding to announce to block list moderators and possibly on the list in general in an attempt to get us banned.

The issue of users being able to block moderators and do **exactly** this is something I have brought up to @Gargron before probably over a year ago but he has never acted on fixing this issue and does not see it as needing fixing from what I could gather (he can interject here if he would like).

It is something we as moderators are powerless to detect or act against unless someone actually reports the content first, that is the only way we will even see it. Thankfully none of the block lists have actually acted on this and no damage to QOTO has been done. But seeing as this may continue I want to make others aware of the problem, press Gargron to fix the issue once more, and also encourage **anyone** who sees such content on QOTO to please report it so we can act on it.

I can not personally confirm this but according to the block-list operator they seem to have reason to think it is @snow behind the attacks. This would be in line with the behaviors from snow I have witnessed in the past.

For the attempt by snow to spam and falsely accuse instances see here:

likeable.space/notice/A21ux0Ib

For more information see these attempted block requests on QOTO that were made in this fashion:

schlomp.space/FediBlock/data/p

schlomp.space/FediBlock/data/p

@arteteco @Sphinx @khird

(Note: originally posted from @freemo account. Repasted here to show up in QOTO announcements as well)

@QOTO@groups.qoto.org

Everyone please welcome QOTO's newest moderator to the team @khird

Please reach out to him or any of the other QOTO admins if you need help with anything. Remember most of the moderators aren't available all the time so best to tags ll the moderators if you need help and just see who responds first. But we are all here to help, so dont hesitate to reach out!

@QOTO@groups.qoto.org

After discussing with the QOTO moderators we would like to nominate @khird as a new moderator.

It isn't official yet though, we want to give all of our users a chance to consider our nomination and vote either for or against. Also users are welcome and encouraged to nominate their own suggestions as well.

After about a week if no objections are raised and the support is positive with no opposing nominations to consider we will make the nomination real.

Lets hear from you!

What should QOTO's next feature be?

## Moderated Groups Walk-through

The following is a breakdown of how the new Moderated Group server works. If you want to start a group (becoming the owner and moderator for that group) **you can sign up here**: groups.qoto.org

This server is not intended for, nor does it support, regular user accounts. Its intended purpose is to host managed groups similar to gup.pe but adding the ability for a group to be owned and managed by an owner giving them the ability to mute, block, or silence misbehaving users as well as to make the group private so that only approved members can join.

The way it works is rather simple, similar to guppe anyone who makes a top-level post and tags the group's account name will have their post added to the group automatically presuming they have permission to post to the group. By default groups are open and anyone would have permission to post to a group. These posts can be done as either public or unlisted, however DMs will not work as they lack the permission for other users to see it. If you wish to get group posts in your home timeline you simply follow the group, that's all there is to it.

Keep in mind while all servers support groups, since it uses standard mechanisms to operate, not all servers will render groups in the same way. You will get the best group expiernce with an account on QOTO which has a unique feature whereby Groups are rendered and handled in a special way. There is a "Group directory" on QOTO, for example, that lists all groups discovered around the fediverse and lists them, ordered by how active they are. Also when you pull up the timeline for a group it renders in a way that makes group posts seem seamless. However if you are on vanilla Mastodon or some other server like Pleroma there isn't any special handling for groups; that means posts made to a group will still show up in your home timeline but it will appear as a boost made by the group account itself. So functionally it still works. This is no different than how guppe works so the expiernce with guppe based groups is no different.

After signing up please consider going to the new accounts profile setting and selecting "List this account on the directory". This will ensure that your group is discoverable and that other users around the fediverse can search for, find, and ultimately join, your group. Without this checked it will not show up in the Group Directory on other servers as well.

Moderation of the group by the account owner is not much different than a normal user account. You can mute, block, or silence users to limit their ability to see or post to the group as you see fit. Similarly a group can be made follower-only if you wish to restrict who can follow a group.

One important note, due to the special nature of a server devoted to groups a few features have been explicitly turned off to prevent abuse. A group account can not follow other user or groups, though it can be followed. As such there is also no home timeline. This prevents users from spam following to get followers to a group.

## The fediverse's first public Managed Group Server is live!

* Sign up while all the good names are available *

You can go to groups.qoto.org and register for a group. But be sure to read the about/more page first to understand how it works! groups.qoto.org/about/more

Anyway, as far as I know this is the first time the fediverse has had an open, managed group server.

QOTO also has the group directory. Attached is what the group directory, and a group timeline looks like on QOTO, but we did some streamlining, your client may render groups differently and most wont have the directory, which is a federated list of active groups.

Anyway, anyone who wants a group, go sign up for one! Its open now!

@QOTO@groups.qoto.org

# Managed Groups

Should be launched on QOTO tomorrow! but the dev server with a test group is up now!

We will be opening up the Groups Server, most likely, tomorrow. I just need to get email confirmations working (not sure why they arent)...

In the meantime I created a single group for testing purposes and have the server running just to see if its stable overnight and so I can continue working on it. I will let everyone know when its open for registration so you can create your own managed group on the fediverse.

If you'd like to try out the first group, which is intended for general discussion about the group server, QOTO, or really anything really, then just post an original message and tag @QOTO and it should post to the QOTO group.

Keep in mind while QOTO users have the native group expiernce and the groups will appear to work as just a shared space where people can post publicly, users on other servers will not have the integrated expiernce, however it will still be usable and works rather well. The threads in a group will just show up as boosts instead, but functionally its the same so no big deal.

Anyway feedback welcome, play around with the QOTO group while I get some sleep and tomorrow keep your eyes out for the announcement of open-registration so you can create your own moderated group on fediverse.

Here is an excellent explanation of QOTO's remote local timeline feature.

🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱  
Remote Timelines I wanted to take a minute to explain QOTOs Remote timeline feature, specifically the new aspect we just released on the advanced ...
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Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.