MeowCat is a Python web application that will implement a federated blogging, microblogging, and social networking platform using the ActivityPub protocol.
To be a blogging and microblogging platform (similar to Wordpress or Twitter).
The ability to Meowcat to post long posts makes it most useful for more thoughtful intellectual people -- the opposite of Twitter and Instagram in a way. This is good because I'm aiming at an under-served audience. The Fediverse already has microblogging software (Mastodon), so MeowCat will carve out a new ecological niche.
MeowCat uses a varient of Markdown markup, with extensions for hashtags and wiki links. Code highlighting is enabled, making it attractive to programmers (another under-served audience).
MeowCat will allow polls on posts so users can get feedback. Each poll question can allow multiple answers or only one.
Each user will be able to upload images which they can embed in their posts, replies, and wiki pages. They will also be able to embed images from PixelFed and videos from PeerTube. Legacy non-federated platfroms such as YouTube will also be supported.
MeowCat will be part of the Fediverse with Meowcat instances talking to each other and other Fediverse services using ActivityPub.
Each user will have their own wiki, their own personal web space in which they can create pages on whatever they want (similar to Geocities).
MeowCat will allow people to group posts based on topics (similar to Reddit's subreddits). Each topic will have its own topic-based wiki, where users can collaboratively create content.
Wikis can optionally be linked together on multiple instances so that any change to the wiki on one instance is automatically copied (perhaps using a flood-fill algorithm) to other instances. This would then be a distributed wiki which would be resilient so that if one instance went down, the wiki would still be there.
MeowCat will allow users to send private posts to other users (similar to email). When private posts travel over the internet they will be encrypted.
A long term goal of MeowCat is to allow users to get a Raspberry Pi, download the MeowCat software onto the Pi, spend 10 minutes configuring it though a web interface, and then attaching the Pi to their home router to act as their own social media server that they and their friends can use, connected to all other federated servers using ActivityPub.
The current implementation is written in Python, with some client-side JavaScript.
It currently does blogging and wikis, although you can't upload images yet.
Connection to the Fediverse is not yet implemented.
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.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.