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Server notifications on fedi (lemmy.nz)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by altphoto@lemmy.today to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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For the longest time, I've been wanting to set up an email server with one of its main purposes being phone notifications.

Is there a fedi thing that I can use to do that?

You know how many server apps will ask for an email address?

Heck even immich asked for an email address! WTF! Ask me for my mastodon or my Lemmy address! So far these have been very reliable communication systems.

I guess the question is also a sort of statement. Why not add a fedi option for logins? Please???

Looks like they hacked something already for this using:

https://unifiedpush.org/

https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/12842

It looks intimidating but probably same as spooling up a mastodon instance.

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[-] JASN_DE@feddit.org 45 points 11 months ago

You know how many server apps will ask for an email address?

Heck even immich asked for an email address! WTF! Ask me for my mastodon or my Lemmy address!

Most people have one or more email addresses (the OG federated messaging system) and email notifications pretty much "just work". Compared to email usage, Fediverse users are a rounding error.

[-] altphoto@lemmy.today 3 points 11 months ago

Okay but why not add the option. I'm going to request it on immich!

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Development time and user support?

These are two pretty obvious reasons. It takes time and time is a limited resource. Therefore, time should be spent on solving impactful problems. Lemmy account login is extremely low impact, it's not a bad thing, it's just not something that improves immich for a large portion of its user base.

Another thing is user support. Since the many instances are self-hosted for the most part, and they will go offline, and they will go away forever in some instances. Users asking for support for this login type and asking for additional features to make up for this baked in instability.

Essentially. Low impact work that may drive a higher volume of support efforts.

It's the same reason some niche projects stop supporting Linux. Low user volume and disproportionately high "neediness" of those users.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago

Develop and maintain it.
Then you can open a pull request.

[-] Static_Rocket@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

There were old wrappers that emulated sendmail but reformatted the message for use with gotify and such

[-] markstos@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Because less than 1% of users would use it and your trusting the security of not one bit partner but thousands of ever-changing small partners.

Also, email is already federated.

[-] altphoto@lemmy.today 1 points 11 months ago

The security of one big partner is bonkers. Anyone working for that company can divulge your personal data to anyone who has enough influence, money or power to do so. Having thousands of literally individual Linux installations is what makes Linux safe-er for example.

[-] white_nrdy@programming.dev 3 points 11 months ago

If you want to host your own email server, then do that. As someone earlier in the thread said, email was the first federated messaging system. That was the entire point of SMTP. Anyone could host one and trust it would work.

I don't know if it's what you're looking for, as it's not ActivityPub based, but Postmoogle is a Matrix bridge email server, where you can send emails to it and they'll be converted to Matrix messages. There might be a similar thing for ActivityPub?

[-] altphoto@lemmy.today 11 points 11 months ago

Looks like they hacked something already for this using:

https://unifiedpush.org/

https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/12842

It looks intimidating but probably same as spooling up a mastodon instance.

[-] Archer@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

Not really a solution without something on iOS

[-] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 8 points 11 months ago

Fedi doesn't support secure communication, that's why (the last time I dove into the subject) lemmy has a profile field for yer Matrix account. Encrypted communication. Mails are usually hosted on "reputable" services and has some sort of privacy agreement, something I've yet to see on a fedi site.

And if you think of lemmy or mastodon as a communication service rather than a publishing platform, you're probably being spied on more than you expect.

Fedi logins would require an account backend, which is quite a way aways from the fediverse as far as I know. Not to mention it would require a stable, permanent fedi provider with absolute trust.

For a simple e-mail server you could use a server management suite like YunoHost, comes with a working mail server right out of the box. For only recieving registration mails and notification you wouldn't even have to mess with online spam filters due to not being GAFAM.

Someone mentioned UnifiedPUSH, which is nice but has very limited platform support at the moment as it has to be added to every single site and app. As far as I know it also sends notifications only using transport encryption so the server admin would have access to your notifications. Better to self-host, best to self-host at home on your own hardware.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 6 points 11 months ago

https://github.com/YoRyan/mailrise

Is something you might be interested in.

[-] altphoto@lemmy.today 1 points 11 months ago

Ah! Indeed, very interesting!

[-] zorflieg@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

If you have a Google account you can setup webhooks to a chat space. That's the best way if it supports it. If you continue to have this problem with email only you could setup n8n to receive notifications via other methods and forward them to a webhook.

[-] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

There is something called OpenWebAuth that is currently in use by Hubzilla.

There's even a FEP for it: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/61cf/fep-61cf.md

[-] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

Well, time to switch providers.

[-] JadedBlueEyes@programming.dev 0 points 11 months ago

Email is federated. You can set up your own server using something like Stalwart in a few hours. I deliver thousands of emails a month on my personal server. The problem is deliver ability to Gmail and outlook, but if you don't care about that then you're golden.

this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
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