this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Fediverse
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Cute logo, although it sounds like it's related to FireFox somehow.
Yeah, that's definitely a reaction I saw as well. At least it's not a web browser? ๐
It's an ActivityPub browser, arguably ๐
It will be interesting to see if any browser adds features to become basically an activitypub client.
You know, it's not impossible. But, very few ActivityPub platforms actually support the Client to Server protocol in any meaningful way. Most platforms use some variation of the Mastodon APIs.
Yep. And I think it's becoming increasingly controversial as the fediverse increases in diversity while simultaneously looking for what its "killer app" or "killer feature" is.
I've hassled Evan (co-editor of ActivityPub) about this and they say they've got a blog post coming about their views on the client-server protocol and why it isn't used more. I've also seen others, including the dev of calckey/firefish, say that it actually isn't a good protocol ready for use in production, which given how other platforms, including calckey/firefish, are adopting the mastodon API, is basically a soft concession to the idea of that being the de facto standard.
And, FWIW, my bet on the fediverse's "killer feature" is relatively seamless interop across a diverse, internet spanning ecosystem of platforms with decent nomadic identity or at least identity ownership. Once that starts to feel like a thing (which is definitely not the case now, at all), then I think the fediverse will actually be born. All of this right now is prototyping and groundwork. Which is also why (and I know I'm ranting now, sorry, I wouldn't bet against AT-Protocol/BS. Though I don't know the technical details, if they've sorted out how to get nomadic identity going with a protocol that allows for new platforms to grow and scale on top of it along with flexibility around feeds and moderation, it would be reasonable to expect that we might not talk much about ActivityPub in 10 years time.
Yep, you're preaching to the choir. I ended up writing an article with some ideas of what goals need to be met: https://deadsuperhero.com/2022/02/towards-a-greater-federated-architecture/
Also ... a quick skim and I can see that it features friendica/diaspora (and hubzilla?) heavily ... which totally tracks!
While those platforms all seem to be born out of a facebook model of social media (?), in terms of creating user empowerment and a diverse ecosystem, it does feel like the modern fediverse has a little bit of NIH syndrome. It'd be interesting to nail down if that's true or not and if so why/how. Either way, that the whole fediverse is dominated by the Twitter/microblog model instead, does not feel like a positive phenomenon to me.
Thanks for the post!!
So, the short answer is: different platforms were developed at different times with different goals in mind. It just so happened that something OStatus-based (now AP), with a focus on microblogging, became the popular thing. And basically everything else in the space had to build compatibility for the way it did things.
Digging in a bit more, there are a few things that really contributed to Mastodon's success over other efforts at the time:
Up until this point, every attempt failed at one of these three things. Diaspora had an okay interface, and great word-of-mouth, but no support for mobile. (They also had other problems in development, but that's another story). Friendica had an ugly interface, a brilliant backend, and a very small hobbyist community. Mike Macgirvin also has a habit of spinning off new projects from old ones, to chase some wild hair he's got regarding how to do something new. So, you have kind of a fragmented community of "kind-of" supported platforms and no marketing.
Anyway, to the point: while the fediverse does have some NIH going on, many of the foundational technologies are shared, like Webfinger and ActvityPub. Contrast this with Tent, which really threw the baby out with the bathwater, and tried to do everything from the ground up with just two guys building it. It didn't end well.
Anyway, sorry, rant over. ๐
No no ... great rant!!
If we had some sort of microblogging feature set here I'd boost. Though I guess one could post a link to this comment as a top level post, just like a quote-tweet or something ... hmmm.
This is really cool!
Oh nice!
Did you post this anywhere that I should be following (lemmy/kbin or masto?)
I think I posted it in this community a year or two ago, but that was way before the Reddit migration happened. Here it is: https://lemmy.ml/post/173958
27 upvotes ... big numbers for 2022! ๐