Fediverse

Hi guys! I've been here and there in the fediverse since a quite few years...always liked pleroma and mastodon, but always have a very bad luck. Every instance I went , every instance closed... Any good advice to choose an instance? I'm kinda tired of being exporting and exporting ad infinitum

This post is inspired by this prior post about a blog leaving the fediverse in favor of sticking to RSS:

Why do we advocate for, and pour hours of development into, ActivityPub rather than building clients which add a social layer to existing content distribution and communication protocols? I ask this in earnest, assuming that there is a comprehensive and well thought out array of reasons that I need to learn to fully grasp the project and it's motives.

It appears the fundamental design decision of Activity pub, shifting the hosting burden from a single host to a distributed network of server instances and user point of access to social content from a single host to any instance that will allow them to join and support the volume of content that they request to federate. This enables a more robust network, with instances holding content the users have interacted with regardless of if the original host instance goes down. It also reduces time to load for content after it has beed federated to a user's local instance, assuming it is closer in proximity and capable enough. At the same time, this dramatically increases the total storage burden (and to a lesser extent compute burden) of the network and makes content ownership and control a challenge.

Functionally the Fediverse is a public commons with content ownership practically distributed across the network of instances, whether copyright says so or not. Attempts to impose universal author controls on this framework face a lot of dissonance because it is fundamentally at odds with the underlying concept of federation as distributed hosting. The minute a host begins hosting content over which they have no control (such as encrypted posts) the potential for abuse skyrockets, and compromises between these priorities demand at minimum that users outside a host's instance maintain rights to delete and modify content on their instance whether or not they are otherwise at odds with the instance admin. Encryption also adds substantial compute burden to the network.

Since the popularization of the Distributed Social Network concept I have wondered whether pre-existing content distribution infrastructure like RSS/Atom might not be more advantageous as a backbone for social networking, with the development load shifted mostly to the client side and away from protocols. The IndieWeb project is playing with some of these ideas, and I have seen some prototypes online of RSS based social networks, so my question is, what is the fundamental advantage of ActivityPub over the combination of these other existing protocols with longer histories and broader existing implementation? RSS, Atom, email, XMPP, etc. Is lower latency really a good enough justification for widely redundant data distribution when the aggregation and discovery of content can be handled separately from hosting it?

This question becomes increasingly relevant when it comes to multimedia, and the minute that you offload multimedia to central servers by link embedding instead of hosting within the instance, boom you are back to the old centralized architecture and why are you federating?

So I am going to pose this question to the Fediverse myself, what is the reason that federated content distribution should be adopted for general use rather than distributed aggregation? That is to say of a client performed with the same features as a Fediverse front end, but all of the content was self-hosted and listed via RSS or Atom with comments handled via Webmention, direct messages via email or XMPP, and moderation and discivery handled at the level of aggregation via instances (meaning a user "joins" or "subscribes" to an instance, and that instance provides a ban list, list of feeds subscribed to by its users for discovery, provides a user directory) what would be the features that this type of system would lack that ActivityPub based systems have in place?

There are three advantages I see to AcrivityPub, and I'm not completely sure they justify mass adoption vs. the cost of broad redundancy of content and authorship issues. What am I missing?

1. Choosing local instance for faster loading, but this only is an advantage after content is brought in for the first time, in which case it actually is slower as first the instance has to pull the content and then serve it to the user.

2. "all" content in the protocol is of the same type, allowing for easier interoperability between clients and services. I'm thinking this is the root of what most people will say is the big advantage of ActivityPub vs. older protocols, but I'd like to hear more about why this is enough of a reason to overcome the inertia of existing mass adoption and support of the alternatives. Also, couldn't this also apply to a service built on an existing self-hosted protocol like Atom?

3. It isn't based in XML, and modern devs don't want to use XML. As I'm not a coder, I cant say how big an influence this has, but from what I have seen it seems to be a substantial factor. Can anyone explain why?

What am I missing? I know it must be a lot, and I thank you in advance for cluing me in.

Mastodon is officially rolling out quote posts. Starting next week, you’ll see an option to quote another user by selecting the repost — or “boost” — button, allowing you to add your thoughts to someone else’s post.

The decentralized platform initially planned not to launch quote posts over concerns that they could be used for harassment or to take someone out of context. Mastodon reversed this decision in February, saying a lack of quote posts might discourage people from joining the fediverse.

While most of this post is about Blacksky, there are a couple of sections that focus on the fediverse -- "And yet..." and "A great learning opportunity for the ActivityPub Fediverse"

The admin of the Mastodon instance cyberspace.social just received an AI powered notice to delete the parody account @microsoft@lea.pet

This was a really great interview we had with the team from A New Social. We talked about bridging, being able to migrate data across different protocols, some of the team's latest ongoing efforts, and a long rant about where the network is, and where we hope it will go.

On Discourse and Decentralisation

The Community Group for #ActivityPub is drafting an open letter calling for respect and collaboration between the people working on the different protocols in the open social web.

I'm signing the letter, and with it, I have some thoughts regarding discourse, decentralisation and why I think this space matters.

This past June, I put together a write-up about two major approaches to backfilling conversations. The ability to properly backfill conversations means we will be able to make major inroads toward solving the feeling that the fediverse is quiet.

I, alongside several other members of the SWICG Forums and Threaded Discussions Task Force (ForumWG) have been working toward building implementor support for Conversational Contexts — the ability to explicitly classify a set of objects as belonging to a conversation, whether that be a topic, reply tree, or similar.

I am happy to report that we have made some wonderful inroads this past few months!

• jesseplusplus@mastodon.social has been working closely with the Mastodon team to allow software to backfill from Mastodon — this pull request has now been approved!
• I have been working with both nutomic@lemmy.ml and rimu@piefed.social to allow software to backfill from Lemmy and Piefed, respectively. (Lemmy PR, Piefed issue)

This marks a major milestone in the adoption of conversational contexts. With Mastodon on board backfill will be possible with the majority of the microblogiverse. With Lemmy and Piefed on board, backfill will be possible with the majority of the threadiverse.

Remember that pfefferle@mastodon.social was an early adopter of conversational contexts, and we have been able to backfill from WordPress blogs for quite awhile now (so that's the blogiverse too)

I for one, am eagerly awaiting the next version of all of these softwares!!

this week's #fediverse news:

• Government of Nepal shuts down virtually all social media over the weekend, including Mastodon
• An open letter calling for a cooling down of discourse and increased respect regarding debates between #activitypub and #atproto about decentralisation
• the a.gup.pe system, which added group support for microblogging, shuts down after the domain hijacked.

Y'all, I'm a big fan of Lemmy, and looking to get out of the walled gardens and into the fediverse as much as I can.

I'm wondering about a few things, so let me know before I go signing up for everything if I'm doing this right or what.

I'm looking for some sort of blog/html hosting site, and I think that Hubzilla is appropriate for this, but I'm not sure. Primarily, I just want some space for some webgames and assets. Nothing crazy. That might also be Codeberg (OSS, not federated AFAIK), but I'm not sure about Hubzilla since it seems to do everything. Federating from Wordpress won't work because they seem to have their direct HTML editing access locked down to the point that it's not what I need.

I understand that pixelfed is the IG parallel (I don't use IG more than seeing what my spouse and 1 friend sends me), but are there multiple options for FB replacement? Or just Friendica? I genuinely don't think I'll have any IRL friends on Friendica if I go look, but I'm not going to have to provide an ID. But hey, there's always my 500th overlapping Linux enthusiast group to join.

Thanks in advance - all advice appreciated!

Hey, I am currently trying to understand a bit better what the Activity Pub allows and what it doesn't as I am preparing a presentation on that topic.

On Lemmy I can join other servers without having to recreate an account. Does that also work for across Activity Pub supporting software? Could I join a PeerTube page and then post there? Could I upload videos? Could I join Mastodon or Pixelfed and post images?

Like many others, when the reddit APIcalypse happened, I moved to the fediverse. Like many, I wasn't sure what it really consisted of, how it worked, or what instance to move to. Eventually I decided to sign up with kbin.social. Ernest was welcoming, the instance was friendly with a nice mix of topics, the community was great, having access to both threadiverse and microblogs was great, and I loved it.

And then Ernest started having health issues and the instance became unstable. Eventually I moved to fedia/mbin, which I enjoy a lot, but I just haven't quite felt that same sense of belonging - I don't know, maybe the new job just kept me away a bit too much, or I'm getting old, or just been through too many changes. But I've kept kbin on my launch page, and sometimes I find myself a bit wistful for it.

I poked at the internet, and the kbin.social domain expires in a few days, on 10 September, which I suppose will be a formal end to the project. In memory of kbin, I'd like thank Ernest: wherever you are, I hope you are well and enjoying your life. Thank you for the concepts behind and your work on kbin; I love the bridging of the microblogs and threadiverse. And thank you for making the transition to the fediverse less confusing to this old redditor. I wish you the best in life, and thank you again.

Over the past few months in particular, the Social Web Community Group has seen an increase in heated discussions online that have been arguing protocol superiority and creating conflict between ActivityPub and AT Protocol, or trying to promote one over the other. These discussions have generally not been productive, created contention within the community that stands in the way of collaboration, and been a hotbed for conflict, disagreements, and misinformation. There has often been significant biases exhibited within these conversations.

ActivtyPub in its current usage does make different design decisions to AT Protocol, but ActivityPub is not necessarily that different from AT Protocol: both are open social web protocols.

There is an entire section of the ActivityPub specification that isn't as well known or widely adopted but which, at a high level, provides fairly similar ideas to those emphasized within the AT Protocol community for separation between data, identity and applications. Recently, a taskforce within the Social Web Community Group has been established to advance what is now known as the ActivityPub API.

Whilst we may have our differences at present, over time those gaps will narrow, as we share a lot more in common than we have differences.

There does not have to be a “winning” protocol. We do not build a better open social web for everyone by fighting and arguing about protocol superiority. That is not how we achieve a better open social web. Instead, we must work together, cross-pollinate and share ideas, and participate within each other's communities with respect and mutual understanding. Arguing between us only emboldens those that seek to derail and destroy efforts to build an open social web.

The practice of collaboration outside of our own groups has a long history within the standards community, whether that is with competing companies working together on standards or protocols, or collaboration between different standards bodies like the W3C and IETF.

There has already been cross-pollination of ideas between the people working on ActivityPub and AT Protocol. For example, AT Protocol adopted an internet draft that was originally written to support the ActivityPub ecosystem, and projects within ActivityPub have adopted some ideas on content labeling and starter packs from the AT Protocol ecosystem.

Both ActivityPub and AT Protocol can and do co-exist. This co-existence is perhaps best emphasized by the outstanding work of Bridgy Fed project, which connects ActivityPub, AT Protocol, and other protocols together allowing for interoperability and community that crosses between protocols. If you wanted to summarise this letter on a t-shirt, it would be “People > Protocols > Platforms”.

This statement is a call for cooling the temperature of discussions and a reminder to be respectful of each other and the huge amount of work everyone is putting in to build a better open social web. We do not win by tearing each other down, which only emboldens and empowers those who do not want either protocol to succeed.

This statement was written following an initial discussion at this month's Social Web Community Group meeting, and has been reviewed by several members of the CG.

TLDR: Customized a browser as dedicated Fediverse front-end, use existing web clients for per-service UI, manage account/password with password manager, and merge the notifications from multiple services into one inbox? Is this possible/good?

Hello all,

It's me, an eager fediverse adopter who wants all their friends to get onboard and craves an all-in-one solution for federated content, but who knows no code and barely enough IT to get by reading git documentation.

I'll start by saying that one thing is clear, diversity and experimentation is the essence and benefit of the Fediverse concept. To me, new and exciting ways to use ActivityPub (and other distributed social/comms protocols) get me thrilled and ready for more. The challenge I, and I'm sure many adopters face is the challenge as old as the internet: platform fatigue.

While I want to use all the amazing services the Fediverse offers, managing clients and accounts for each one, and specifically the notification streams coming from all of them, often feels burdensome, decreasing my engagement.

So here's a simple thought experiment I've been playing with: what is the simplest, lowest friction method of accessing and managing multiple notification/content streams without needing to consolidate or centralize client/server development across multiple projects? And further more, how can this set of notifications (and subsequent content interaction) be consolidated yet separated from the other non-fediverse notifications/content across multiple devices?

My naive user mind has pointed me in the direction of dedicated browser instances with customized UI. When I have a webapp I need rapid access to and notifications from I install a dedicated browser instance (or "app" in Edge speak, I know, booo). This works well for me, and in some cases uses less memory than a dedicated application for some reason (looking at you Discord).

So what if a customized browser could be built off of an existing project (probably going to have to be Firefox based, though all eyes on Ladybird), that has a built in password/account manager, and pulls the notification streams from all of the services those accounts interact with into a merged list. Then add filter options for that list including service, account, media type, etc.

All interactions with notifications pulls up a tab of a webclient the user designates for that service, ideally reusing the same single tab unless the user specifically selects open new tab. Each designated service appears on the toolbar as a bookmark, showing notification number beside it. Total notifications and the shortcut to the unified notifications service/Inbox lives on the left or right side of the toolbar and is emphasized.

And that's it, everything Fediverse under one hood, separate from the main browser, not scattered across multiple installed applications, and with each client self-updating.

The challenge? Of course it is merging all the notification streams. Based on what I know of ActivityPub this seems achievable, but the details are beyond me. I am reminded of RSS emerging as the means of addressing a very similar challenge with the emergence of blogs, perhaps an ActivityPub to RSS gateway/bridge could even be the solution to merge the notification streams and then off the shelf RSS reader extensions could serve for the master notification inbox.

I am also reminded of my beloved Trillian which merged IM services under a single application hood, but faced an ever stacking development load as each service changed. Glad to see they still exist, but it seems like the browser route could avoid that centralized dev burden.

Thoughts from more experienced minds than I? Does this make any sense?

Found on mastodon here: https://pc.cafe/@fedicat/115138141811992612

• Next Sosyal is a new social media platform with close ties to the Turkish ruling party, that is based on Mastodon but does not federate
• A shuffle in the places, forums and sites to talk about #activitypub, with new owners for forum SocialHub, the activitypub.rocks website now managed by the W3C SocialCG, and the new activitypub.space forum

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35533581

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35533537

I setup a Mastodon relay - anyone want to help me test by adding it to their instance? Would help me know if the "Recent jobs" stat is working (I think it requires 2 instances at minimum to show jobs) and if adding to instances (outside of my own) is working properly and how traffic looks.

I stumbled onto this interesting protocol. Already has a browser using it called the beaker browser

Basically a decentralized protocol for data with Git-like features built-in. I wonder if any of you have stumbled onto this. Any thoughts ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Graber

In 2015, Graber began working as a software engineer for SkuChain in Mountain View, California. She then worked in a factory in Moses Lake, Washington, where she soldered bitcoin mining equipment. In 2016, she began working as a junior developer for the Zcash cryptocurrency.

So lately I have been trying to figure out why people are calling BlueSky decentralized and I noticed that fun fact. It made me realize how cryptocurrencies are something else that was often technically "decentralized" but in reality controlled by a single person or group.

In case it's also not known, Jack Dorsey who helped found BlueSky is a big cryptocurrency booster.