The server can now act as a proxy for all image, audio or video media coming from other account's posts (both from the Web UI and the Mastodon API). This way, other servers will see media requests coming from the server IP, not the user's, improving privacy. This is controlled by setting the `proxy_media` boolean field to `server.json` to true.
The `strict_public_timelines` option introduced in the previous release now works correctly.
Fixed a crash when posting from the links browser.
Fixed some repeated images from Lemmy posts.
Fixed a crash when posting an image from the tooot mobile app.
Updated FreeBSD rc script: the server process is now managed by the daemon(8) utility (contributed by @stefano@bsd.cafe).
Fixed repeated images in posts from some implementations (those that include an image both as an attachment and as an `<img>` tag inside the post content).
Added a small HTML/CSS tweak to improve post previews from some implementations (contributed by nyanide).
Notifications for `EmojiReact` activities now show the emoji.
New command-line action `insert`, to insert a post by its URL in a user's timeline.
Fixed bad processing/rendering of URLs with two or more @ symbols.
Added post drafts: new or edit post edition dialogs include a checkbox that will cause the message to not be posted, but stored in a list of drafts, directly accesible from the private timeline. From that list, drafts can be edited and definitely posted (or re-stored as a draft for later editing).
Fixed a bug that caused `Block` notifications to not be shown properly.
Added auto boosting. If an account has this flag enabled, all mentions to that account are automatically boosted to all its followers (contributed by sarahpw).
The alt text in attachments that have one is also shown in a dropdown just below it (useful for environments where mouseover is not available, i.e. for phones and tablets).
Instance-wide notifications has been implemented (contributed by louis77). A small tweak to the default CSS was made to suit this change; please consider updating your style.css (see doc/style.css as an example).
Mastodon API: fixed login problems with the official Mastodon API, IceCube and Toot! on iOS, some fixes for Mona and Tokodon apps, user credentials can now be edited from apps (all contributed by louis77), fixed crash on unset content-type header.
Fixed a bug that caused some incorrect unfollows under special conditions (with shared inboxes enabled and users from the same instance that follow each other, the internal message distributor was confused).
Support for custom Emojis has been added; they are no longer hardcoded, but read from the `emojis.json` file at the server base directory. Also, they are no longer limited to string substitutions, but images as external URLs are also supported (see `snac(8)` for more information).
Added an additional check for blocked instances (sometimes, posts from blocked sites that were ancestors of legit posts were 'leaking' into the timeline).
On OpenBSD, if the `disable_email_notifications` server flag is set to `true`, `unveil()` is not called for the execution of the `/usr/sbin/sendmail` binary and `pledge()` doesn't set the `exec` promise.
Incoming posts can now be filtered out by content using regular expressions on a server level (these regexes are written in the `filter_reject.txt` file at the server base directory; see `snac(5)` and `snac(8)`).
Improved page position after hitting the `Hide` or `MUTE` buttons (for most cases).
Use a shorter maximum conversation thread level (also, this maximum value is now configurable at compilation level with the `MAX_CONVERSATION_LEVELS` define).
A new instance page, that shows all posts by users in the same instance (like the public instance timeline, but interactive). This will help building communities.
Added a new server-level configuration parameter: `min_account_age`. If this value (in seconds) is set in `server.json`, any activity coming from accounts that were created newer than that will be discarded. This can be used to mitigate spam.
Mastodon API: Tweaks to support the Subway Tooter app (contributed by pswilde), added support for editing posts, fixed an error related to the edit date of a post, fixed some crashes.
New command-line option `state`, that dumps some information about the running server and the state of each thread (note: this feature uses shared memory blocks and you may need an argument to the `make` call in older Linux distributions; please see the `README` file for details).
Fixed a nasty bug that caused the in-memory output queue to be corrupted under heavy traffic loads. This is a good reason to upgrade (thanks to Víctor Moral and Stefano Marinelli for helping me in fixing this).
Shared inboxes are now supported. This is not a user visible feature (hopefully, they will not feel any change), but it will significantly improve traffic for snac instances with many users and will open room for new features that are only feasible with these kind of input channels (this is not enabled by default; see `snac(8)`).
Tags in posts are now indexed and searching by tag is possible. It's still not very useful, but at least new user posts contain links that return real search-by-tag results. Also, no "re-indexing" of the previously stored data is done (only new local and remote posts will be searchable by tag).
Added FastCGI support. This allows for simpler setups (e.g. on #OpenBSD, it's no longer necessary to enable and configure `relayd`, as the native `httpd` daemon includes FastCGI support).
Outgoing connections that fail with a timeout are retried with a higher timeout limit. But, if the instance keeps timing out, it's penalized by skipping one retry.
Don't allow creating users which user name strings only differ in case. This was creating some problems (e.g. the webfinger interface doesn't allow case sensitivity).
Additional HTTP response headers can be defined by adding an `http_headers` object with header/content pairs into the `server.json` configuration file.
If you hover the mouse pointer over a vote option in a pool, the current count (as per the last update) is shown. This may be considered cheating in some cases, so try to be honest (or not).
Announces (boosts) can now be disabled/reenabled on a per-people basis (to limit those boost-trigger-happy friends from flooding your timeline). This is operated from the people page.
It's now possible to show an instance timeline instead of the classic greeting static page at the base URL. This can be enabled by setting the `show_instance_timeline` field to `true` in the server configuration file. Other metadata fields can be set to add information to this page; please see `snac(8)` (the Administrator manual page) for details.
Show the 'audience' field (channel URL) if a post has one (like pages from lemmy channels and other forums).
Some web UI tweaks: the new post field is hidden by default (wasting less screen space), added a 'back to top' link at the bottom of the page and other minor tuning to the HTML and default CSS (contributed by yonle).
Fixed RSS (contributed by yonle).
Fixed interactive text processes (like instance or user creating) by calling `fflush()` after printing text prompts (it was broken on systems that use musl like Alpine Linux).
The user@host identifier is now shown next to the user avatar (contributed by Haijo7). A small tweak to the default CSS was made to suit this change; please consider updating your style.css.
New user configuration switch to drop direct messages from people you don't follow, in order to mitigate spam from Mastodon open registration instances.
When updating user information (e.g. the display name or the bio), the changes are also sent to the people being followed (so they have an updated description about who the user is).
Mastodon API: account search has been implemented, so mention completion works from apps; new support for blocking users (this operation is called MUTE here).
New Mastodon API features: the instance public timeline is now a real one, unfavourite / unreblog is supported (somewhat). Some regression bugs regarding image posting were also fixed.
The non-standard `Ping` and `Pong`#ActivityPub activities have been implemented as proposed by @tedu@honk.tedunangst.com in the https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk/v/tip/f/docs/ping.txt document (with a minor diversion: retries are managed in the same way as the rest of #snac messages).
New Mastodon API features: account search, relationships (so the Follow/Unfollow buttons now appear for each account), follow and unfollow accounts, an instance-level timeline (very kludgy), custom emojis for accounts and statuses, many bug fixes (sadly, the Mastodon official app still does not work).
Added a new notification area to the web interface, accessible from a link at the top, that also shows the number of unseen events. This area lists all notifications in reverse chronological order and provides a button to clear all.
More work in the Mastodon API. The new supported features are: notifications, post of new and reply messages (including attached images). Some API v2 entry points had to be implemented, so you'll need to update your HTTPS proxy configuration again, see `snac(8)`. #Tusky no longer crashes, or so I think. The official app and close relatives like #Megalodon still don't work, though.
If you are not interested in this Mastodon API crap, you can compile it out of your #snac by defining the `NO_MASTODON_API` preprocessor directive and forget about it.
Started Mastodon API support, so you can use Mastodon-compatible apps to access #snac accounts. What works so far: login, private and public timelines, full post information (replies and ancestors), liking and boosting posts. Things that don't work yet but eventually will: following accounts, posting and replying to messages (I still have to figure out how some things work, like posting images), notifications (needs some internal support), the instance timeline (snac does not have one, but it can be simulated with not much effort) and probably many other things. Things that will never work: bookmarks, pinning, a federated timeline, many other things that I don't remember right now. Please note that if you want to use this API in your instance, you must add some lines to your HTTP proxy configuration, see the `snac(8)` (administrator documentation) manual page. I'm doing my tests using the #Tusky (which sometimes crashes, surely my fault), #AndStatus, #Fedilab and #Husky Android apps. Success or failure reports will be appreciated.
Federation with other instances have been improved by collecting shared inbox information from input messages more thoroughly.
Fixed an obscure bug that caused connection rejections from some instances.
Some rules regarding incoming messages have been tightened; messages that are not related to the user are not added to the timeline. This has to be implemented because some ill-behaving ActivityPub implementations were found injecting unwanted messages to user inboxes.
Messages from MUTEd users are rejected as soon as possible with a 403 Forbidden HTTP status.
Fixed a minor bug regarding the scope of the 'Update' activity (edited posts were sent to more recipients that it should).
More aggressive input sanitization (some posts were found that included strange ASCII control codes).
Added "Open Graph" HTML meta tags for better previsualization of `snac` links from other social media.
Fixed a bug with the Delete button in the web interface: sometimes, instead of the post (as the user intended), the follower was deleted instead :facepalm:
Followers can now be deleted (from the *people* page in the web interface). Yes, to stop sending in vain your valuable and acute posts to those accounts that disappeared long ago and flood the log with connection errors.
The internal way of processing connections have been rewritten to be more efficient or, as technical people say, "scalable". This way, `snac` is much faster in processing outgoing connections and less prone to choke on an avalanche of incoming messages. This is a big step towards the secret and real purpose of the creation of this software: being able to host the account of #StephenKing when he finally leaves that other site.
When replying, the mentioned people inherited from the original post will be clearly labelled with a CC: prefix string instead of just being dropped out there like noise like Mastodon and others do. (I hope) this will help you realise that you are involving other people in the conversation.
Fixed a bug in the Boost by URL option when the URL of the boosted message is not the canonical id for the message (e.g. Mastodon's host/@user/NNN vs. host/users/user/statuses/NNN).
Some outgoing connection tweaks: the protocol is no longer forced to be HTTP/1.1 and timeouts are less restrictive. This has proven useful for some unreachable instances.
Clicking the 'Like' and 'Boost' buttons don't move the full conversation up; after that, the page is reloaded to a more precise position. Still not perfect, but on the way.
Added (partial) support for /.well-known/nodeinfo site information. This is not mandatory at all, but if you want to serve it, remember that you need to proxy this address from your web server to the `snac` server.
A big disk layout rework, to make it more efficient when timelines get very big. Please take note that you must run `snac upgrade` when you install this version over an already existing one.
On output, shared inboxes are used on instances that support it. This reduces bandwidth usage greatly, specially for very popular users with thousands of followers.
Added RSS output support for the user posts (by adding .rss to the actor URL or by requesting the actor with an Accept HTTP header of `text/xml` or `application/rss+xml`).
The local timeline purge has been implemented. The maximum days to live can be configured by setting the field `local_purge_days` in the server configuration file. By default it's 0 (no purging).
A new page showing the list of people being followed and that follows us has been implemented, with all operations associated (including sending Direct Messages).
After a like or boost, the scrolling position is set to the next entry in the timeline and not to the top of the page. This is still somewhat confusing so it may change again in the future.
The purge is managed internally, so there is no longer a need to add a cron job for that. If you don't want any timeline data to be purged, set `timeline_purge_days` to 0.
Notes can now attach images and other media. The web interface still limits this feature to only one attachment (given by URL, so the file must have been uploaded elsewhere).
The new (optional) server configuration directive, `disable_cache`, disables the caching of timeline HTML output if set to `true` (useful only for debugging, don't use it otherwise).
