this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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Newsletter platform Ghost adopts ActivityPub to ‘bring back the open web’ (www.theverge.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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They’re not done yet. Just announcing (and the verge reporting on it).

Their announcement (here) is quite forceful though, interestingly. The article described it as a manifesto.

See also a recent post here about their survey on integrating activity pub: https://lemmy.ml/post/14734757

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Small detail that I think is actually quite meaningful:

The article is written by editor-in-chief Nilay Patel. Nilay does not usually write a whole lot of articles, as he's the boss, and the articles he writes are often more commentary (like the famous 'welcome to hell' article for Elon, or his running joke on Brother printers). Within The Verge its usually more David Pierce as a true fediverse believer than Nilay.

Futhermore, earlier this week Nilay posted on Threads a response to Ghost's survey about federation: "Curious how you approach federation for paid newsletters! (Because we want to figure that out too)" https://www.threads.net/@reckless1280/post/C51n5gmvvCJ

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yea the paid subscription question is the big one here. Ghost’s announcement stated that they think it will be easy to integrate that with ActivityPub, which I’d interesting because no one has done it while I think there’s been a good amount of demand for some sort of solution. If ghost sort that out for the ecosystem it could unlock the fediverse for some other platforms. Nebula comes to mind especially.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I ran across this exchange with Ghost CEO John O'Nolan on the Product Hunt announcement:

Levelsio:

Wow great work, do you think payments will start to also go this way with Ghost in the future? As ActivityPub is decentralized, maybe having some decentralized type payments fit into the future

John O'Nolan replied:

yeah! I think crypto is actually starting to get interesting for the first time now, because most people are no longer interested in it. Generally that signals the end of the hype phase and the beginning of practical utility - so I’m very interested in exploring how decentralised payments could work in Ghost in the future. There are all kinds of interesting and legitimate and interesting usecases which Stripe (mostly Visa/Mastercard) refuse to support

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Oooh. Crypto and fediverse … The odd couple!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yea the paid subscription question is the big one here

What is the question, exactly?

I assume your Ghost account will become a Fedi account and your articles will be automatically shared with headlines and links to the article, along with federated boosts, likes and comments.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I suspect it’s more complex than that. If they want any fediverse account to be able to subscribe, which they do, then how do they distribute content only to subscribers and not everyone on their instance?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If they want any fediverse account to be able to subscribe, which they do

Subscribe to the user, not the publication. If they want to actually read the article, they'll have to log in and give them money.

This is pure speculation but it makes the most sense to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

If they want to actually read the article, they’ll have to log in and give them money.

Yea, that's the most straightforward for sure ... but requires leaving the fediverse. I suspect that there are plans/dreams of being fediverse "native" and enabling the full content/publication to be read from ones fediverse account.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

paid newsletters

Baffled those exist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Heaven forbid we should get our news from sites that aren't riddled with ads and pop-ups, or creators should be compensated for their work.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Will adopt*, in the future

At this point I’m not sure any social platform that launches without an eye towards federation stands a chance, really.

That is a...hilariously bold statement. As much as I would love to believe that, the entirety of the Fediverse comprises ~1% of Threads. Not to mention Instagram or Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's talking about new networks not already established ones.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

New? Old? Don't think it really matters in this case

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Of course it matters. A new network will have to start from scratch and with the "nobody is there, so I won't join"-mentality, potential growth is severely limited. By implementing federation, you will instantly have a base community to build on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

A new network will have to start from scratch and with the "nobody is there, so I won't join"-mentality, potential growth is severely limited.

There's "nobody" on Fedi either. Also federation isn't for everyone. It greatly complicates lots of things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:

That’s a big shot of support for the fediverse — the network of open and interoperable social services that have all been gaining momentum over the past year.

This has long been the dream, and it seems like the platforms betting on it in various ways — Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Flipboard, and others — are where all the energy is, while attempts to rebuild closed systems keep hitting the rocks.

Ghost itself is one of the bigger winners in the oops-Substack-has-Nazis newsletter migration, and letting authors on its platform more easily distribute their work is itself in stark contrast to Substack, which is reacting to its failing business model by making it harder to leave its own increasingly-social-network-like platform.

Ghost says it’s working with Mastodon and Buttondown, another newsletter platform, on ActivityPub support.

The company also says it will be working to improve its reading experience as it prepares to let people follow other fediverse authors on its platform.

Importantly, the project FAQ also says that paid content “should work fine” with ActivityPub as well — something no other platform has really tried yet, as far as I’m aware.

The original article contains 377 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Ghost itself is one of the bigger winners in the oops-Substack-has-Nazis newsletter migration, and letting authors on its platform more easily distribute their work is itself in stark contrast to Substack, which is reacting to its failing business model by making it harder to leave its own increasingly-social-network-like platform.

a synopses of this Verge piece by the autotldr bot Lemmy bot