So I'm going through the admin trends panel to approve hashtags for trending, and "forkiverse" is in 4th.

t3rminus

It appears to be some new instance created by and promoted by a podcast, and the hashtag is mostly intro posts... with a bunch of photos taken while people are driving, and some with AI slop.

I sincerely don't know if I should approve this. I'm all for new fedi instances, but I immediately have issues with the content being posted...

#mastoadmin

varve

@t3rminus yiiiiikes no don't use a phone while driving, wtf is wrong with people.

(I know, people think they're That Good(tm) and they can handle it.)

But the photo while driving implies that they *signed up while driving* which is even more attention diverted from controlling the high-speed killing machine that moves in public places.

Paul Chambers🚧

@t3rminus I usually block instance specific hashtags from trends and mute them behind a filter, fwiw.

Usually, they are meant for a specific audience, that instance.

I appreciate it when instances use instance specific tags just for that purpose.

Honestly, for my self-hosted instance, the trends are basically just for me and my wife, so, there is that to take into account.

FinchHaven sfba

@t3rminus

They've been quite busy on Mastodon all today, Saturday, but it is the weekend, so...

I'd heard a very little of them over the last week; they seem to be very busy with a very intense self-promotion campaign

I'm tired of it; I've Muted and Blocked several of the most prolific personalities, and Domain Blocked the entire thing generally

They have nothing to offer me

YMMV...

Here: @theforkiverse.com

#Forkiverse #Mastoadmin

Tim Chambers

@t3rminus Yes. Approve it - it’s legit.

FinchHaven sfba

@t3rminus

Then, because a faint bell rang faintly, I took a look at Github (where I follow Mastodon rather closely) and something's afoot

Don't think it's an actual distro fork (the web site says its running Mastodon v4.5.4) so it may be that someone's dinking around in the local .activitypub.mod.pm

Here: .activitypub.mod.pm / data / theforkiverse.com.json

{"open":true,"total":{"users":8,"posts":11},"hostname":"theforkiverse.com","software":{"name":"mastodon","version":"4.4.5"},"name":"The Forkiverse","description":"Building a better internet with your friends from Hard Fork and Search Engine.","languages":["en"]}

#Forkiverse #Mastoadmin

https://github.com/n4zim/.activitypub.mod.pm/blob/880bbfc5af97d863454bd92d34ede3ef29d859f9/data/theforkiverse.com.json

Ryan Wild

@FinchHaven @t3rminus Looks like that Git Repo is just wrong / mis-reading the data. Seems to be hosted on masto.host so is going to be stock vanilla Mastodon - https://theforkiverse.com/api/v2/instance

FinchHaven sfba

@wild1145

Yeah I'm not an admin and don't pretend to read code

My Github interest is more policies and procedures and attitudes...

cc @t3rminus

Jay :nixos:

@FinchHaven @t3rminus They're just people enthusiastic about getting into the fediverse from what I can tell, nothing nefarious. Happy to see people excited to be here.