Because #BotsInSpace is shutting down () I'm looking for a new home for my bots.

danbri

@bot @Edent when I first explored mastodon seriously a couple years ago the culture was dominated by traumatised Twitter survivors and there seemed to be a strong consensus against any kinds of automation. Has that softened?

Terence Eden

@danbri yup! There's 1st class support for labeling accounts as bots, and excellent API support.
Some of the more vocal commentators have found some other shiny rock to complain about.

Roufnichan LeGauf 🌈

@Edent Some bizarre code in there.

in_array( $inbox_message["actor"], $followers_ids ) ? $from_follower = true: $from_follower = false;

Removing the duplicated code, this is just

$from_follower = in_array( $inbox_message["actor"], $followers_ids ) ? true : false;

And ... ? true : false is redundant, leaving:

$from_follower = in_array( $inbox_message["actor"], $followers_ids );

Terence Eden

@barubary your pull request is very welcome.

Roufnichan LeGauf 🌈

@Edent But then I'd have to create a gitlab account and, worse, write PHP.

Terence Eden

@barubary I'm happy to hold your hand while you do so.

Cogito Ergo Disputo

@Edent @bot question: you say it won't store messages sent to it. How does the Fediverse work in that regard? Messages sent in general are lost if not stored by the recipient? So as owner of such a bot I would effectively never be the wiser as to the feedback on the automated content, right?

Terence Eden

@Disputatore messages are stored in several places.
1) The user who sends the message usually retains a copy.
2) The recipient's server receives a copy (and can choose to save it or not).
3) Anyone following the sender will usually receive a copy of all their messages.

I could save a copy of mentions. But that comes with increased disk space, having to handle deletions, and risk that someone will store abusive content on your server.

Cogito Ergo Disputo

@Edent thank you for taking the time to walk me through it. I have some suggestions that I will eventually post as issues in your gitlab repository. Hopefully that's adequate. I would fork it, but that would force me to recover my rusted-to-pieces programming skills, not to mention actually learning PHP and probably having to learn a whole bunch of stuff required for this particular domain.

Ted Gould

@Edent neat, would be cool to have this on PikaPods so that folks could set it up without knowing how to run a server as well.

PikaPods - Instant Open Source App Hosting

Run the finest Open Source web apps from $1/month, fully managed, no tracking, no ads, full privacy. Self-hosting was never this convenient.

(www.pikapods.com)

Need to figure out an idea for a bot

Terence Eden

@ted you'll need to speak to them about that.
But, personally, I don't think it is suitable for anyone other than tinkerers.

Arjen Haayman

@Edent @vincent @bot I'm using feed2toot to read RSS and post to mastodon. But that wouldn't work with this bot since posting to it isn't like to a regular mastodon instance, is it?

Terence Eden

@haayman @vincent that's correct. My code doesn't replicate the Mastodon experience.

Cogito Ergo Disputo

@Edent well, apparently I hadn't used my Gitlab account for too long, it got wiped out, and I can't be bothered to create a new one. My suggestion is to add the saving of replies with the following configuration options:
- roll over recording based on either number of messages or max memory
- discard any messages over a max number of messages or memory
- no limits

Terence Eden

@Disputatore did you read the FAQ?
https://gitlab.com/edent/activity-bot/#why-doesnt-this-store-replies

Cogito Ergo Disputo

@Edent is it mandatory to expose replies?

Terence Eden

@Disputatore no. But the data is still on your server whether you like it or not.

If you're happy with that risk, feel free to fork it.

Terence Eden

Update!

You can now move followers from your old bot accounts to your new self-hosted ones.

So now @[email protected] points at @[email protected] - and all the followers have moved!

Source code at https://gitlab.com/edent/activity-bot/

Owen Blacker

@Edent I'm intrigued why you went for @solar rather than …@bots.edent.tel

Is it because each bot is running its own instance of that "single account PHP file" thing you shared the other day?

Terence Eden

@owenblacker Yup! A single domain per "instance".
Subdomains are free