I will no longer be working on Mlem.

I started it a year and a half ago when I needed to take my mind off pain from surgery. And I always intended it to be a personal protect that would help me relax.

With the current development of the app, I no longer find being a part of the project relaxing or fun.

I’m not doing any coding anymore, since it’s all done by much more talented and experienced people. If I tried to contribute to my app now, as an outsider, I would be rejected. I’m also not doing much project management. I feel like I don’t have much voice in the development anymore.

I’m also getting backlash for trying to make the app accessible to the average person as opposed to just tech nerds, and it’s not worth the stress. This is happening mostly in my DMs (the other developers are not doing this, so please don’t go after them. They are very nice and would never do this), since some elements of this and Mastodon community don’t have the balls to face me in public.

These are just some of the many reasons I found working on the app for the last few weeks frustrating. Ever since the app exploded in popularity and the community grew, I can say that even thinking about working on Mlem made me instantly angry, annoyed and just overall pissed off.

It’s just not worth it anymore.

The current TestFlight version will keep working for two more days, after which I will erase the app from the App Store. Until then, someone from the team will have given you a new link. I have also transferred the app’s source code to a new owner.

I have released a new version just before posting this, and it’s the last version I have any influence on. The community will continue working on the app.

I will focus on my other apps, which will hopefully not become like Mlem.

Enjoy life, and don’t try to contact me.

This update is big, and there's more coming later! This update includes these additions

• New icon by the amazing clay! Stay tuned for more icons, including Pride! In the future, you will be able to choose between lots of icons, and submit your own

And these fixes:

• A whole bunch of crashes related to loading communities
• Some posts showing multiple times in the feed
• (Hopefully) accounts being deleted between app launches. If this still happens, please either tag me here or add your comment to this issue: https://github.com/buresdv/Mlem/issues/74
• A few issues logging in, namely when the server address included a capital letter, "http://", "https://" and others

In this update:

• Adjusted the way accounts are stored. Now, they are stored using actual account IDs instead of internal IDs
• Hopefully fixed a few issues logging in
• A WIP new page for accounts
• A WIP placeholder for checking your messages

Bugs still present:

• Logging into beehaw with long passwords doesn't work
• There's still a crash when loading some communities. I attempted a fix, but it resulted in a huge memory leak and the app locking up. If you want to assist with fixing this bug, please come forward 😆

In this version:

• Migrated the backend from WebSockets to HTTP
• Removed some intentional crashes, so it should be crashing much less now (hopefully)
• Did some slight optimizations to make the networking work faster. Most notable posting comments and creating posts should be much faster now

After much work, I have migrated Mlem to the REST API. Goodbye, deprecated WebSockets! Mlem is now ready for the future.

🥵😩

Just wanted to give a little heads-up, the newest version no longer supports v1 of the API; this means that Hexbear is, for now, no longer accessible through Mlem.

Luckily, Hexbear will migrate to the newest API version in the future, so just give it some time.

• Fixed crashing when tapping on the "Welcome Reddit refugees" post once and for all (hopefully)! Thanks to https://github.com/mormaer
• Voting on comments now more seamless (and doesn't make the comments reload)
• Fixed bug where upvoting a downvoted post would show the incorrect score (off by 1)

In this version, replying to comments is much more pleasant, as the whole comment section doesn't have to reload anymore. Now, the new comment just slides right in!

You can now also subscribe to and unsubscribe from communities.

As it is now, Mlem also supports the ancient v1 of the API. Pretty much the only instance that still uses this version is Hexbear. All other instances use v3.

Dropping support for v1 would mean much less maintenance on my part, and would mean that updates would come out faster and would be less buggy.

On the other hand, Hexbear is probably the largest single instance.

Even now, Mlem doesn't have the same level of support for both API versions; in v1, for example, Mlem doesn't show user avatars (or any avatars for that matter). So overall, v1 of the API is much more limited, and not properly tested.

Is there anyone who uses Hexbear? Should Mlem have so much more code to support just one instance? Please share your thoughts!

This is a line I’ve read today. There’s an exhibition about the history of the town that I used to live in (and came to visit because my parents live here). It detailed the history of local industry.

It started off at the beginning of the 20th century with a couple of mentions of landowners, petite bourgeoise and private farmers independently developing rudimentary confectionery and baking industry.

Then came the socialist era, during which all this industry was nationalized and transformed into worker cooperatives. It detailed how the industry prospered during socialism and the factories grew exponentially under the guidance of the communist party, but of course, had to throw in “despite great successes of the socialist system in developing the region significantly, it’s totalitarian tyranny left much in the way of personal freedoms to be desired”.

And last, it mentioned the disaster that was the privatizations of 1991. Right after that line in the title, it highlighted a couple of capitalists who came to own most of the previously-collectivized industry, and fired most of the workers, who then left the region, leaving the town in shambles and the local industry to collapse.

The exhibition then concluded with the line “despite many workers being let go, they, compared to the totalitarian socialist regime, had the freedom to find employment elsewhere”

Man, I gotta stop reading this shit.

Feel free to join and test