I'm interested in hearing from #ActivityPub developers who've successfully mapped #OpenGraph properties from <meta> tags in Web pages onto the `Page` type and its properties in AS2.
The Verge article extolling the #Fediverse. I personally think the writer has the wrong point. #Facebook isn't good. Its attraction is "everybody I know is on Facebook" and not any of its half-baked features. Therefore, multiprotocol / multi-network federated social is important to dethroning #corpocentric #socnets like XTwitter ( #x.com / #twitter ) and Meta's Facebook & #Instagram.
I feel this writer's exuberence will turn out to be fantasy, mostly because of misunderstanding what keeps people in the walled gardens and what it will take to free them.
The network effect for #ActivityPub is gaining some serious momentum right now. As more services adopt the protocol, more people, more communities and more content are added to the network making it increasingly more valuable for everyone. This will only accelerate in the coming months as Threads, Wordpress, Tumblr, Flipboard and others federate.
We're still in early innings but there's no way to put this genie back in the bottle. The open social Web / the #Fediverse is going to be huge.
End-to-End does not present this kind of barrier. The default state for a social media platform is to deliver posts from accounts to their followers. Interfering with End-To-End costs *more* than delivering the messages users want to have. Likewise, a Right To Exit is a solved problem, built into the open Mastodon protocol, itself built atop the open #ActivityPub standard.
It's not just Twitter. Every platform is consuming itself in an orgy of enshittification.
The Iris #Nostr client on #Android now has a "block and mute" function, so I've started using that against the #spambots.
Nostr has some great ideas that are way beyond what either #OStatus or #ActivityPub branches of the #Fediverse are doing, but the spam and the fact that there's a really big #Bitcoin "Maxi" faction there are chasing regular people away.
#Meta / #Facebook is building a #Twitter clone under their #Instagram brand. Apparently, there's discussion of various #ActivityPub #Fediverse projects' lead developers signing an NDA and having discussions with them.
The participants appear to be deleting evidence.
I'm not spinning a conspiracy theory. I just don't think Gargron or Dansup have any idea what kinds of restrictions an NDA can contain. They risk long-term damage to their projects and some impact on their careers.
Afterwards, I did a test connection to the #Federati #Murmur / Mumble server. It disconnected once over a ten minute test.
So if I do another #Office_Hours voicechat soon, understand that my connection may be interrupted.
Anyway, I got some great ideas. A has been trying to document #ActivityPub itself (S2S and C2S designs), various implementations (including the Mastodon API that is often used instead of AP_C2S), as well as other #federated communication protocols such as #Matrix and #XMPP. They suggested that "a better Matrix" might be able to be built atop AP.
I used to watch their game streams years ago, but the voice sounded different over Mumble. I'm told that getting a better microphone made the difference.
I have no interest in gatekeeping the #fediverse, preserving the "old" culture here, etc. And I think bringing people together to talk about #ActivityPub is basically always great.
But charging for the online unconference #fediforum that's supposed to bring all implementers and users together just feels like a great way to... gatekeep the fediverse 🙃
If you are an implementor of #ActivityPub, or any related social web apps or protocols, please try to come to the meeting on the future of ActivityPub standardization and related subjects next Wednesday, March 29. It's on-line and hosted by #FediForum and the W3C's Social Web Interest Community Group.
We want to hear from you! Standards should not be created in a vacuum. If you have tried to use ActivityPub (successfully or not!), tell us what you need! And perhaps get involved making it so.
We had 46 people in the session on the future of #ActivityPub and related, hosted by #Fediforum and the #W3C Social Web Incubator Community Group (SWICG). I'm told that was the largest SWICG meeting in history.
And so many implementors were there and spoke up what they need! There's real momemtum.
#ActivityPub, the standard that all of the #Fediverse depends on, and without which you couldn't use the app through which you read this, was created over 5 years ago.
Since, the W3C standards group that produced it disbanded and the standard has been essentially unmaintained.
Which is ... not good, given the recent rapid growth of the Fediverse and the many new apps and websites trying to support it.
#Medium link; don't be surprised if it does weird things before showing you the article.
"Mastodon brought a protocol to a product fight"
> Yes, yes, the network is under immense strain as people flee the Elon strain infecting Twitter. But come on, there are folks who really believe this is going to replace, or even stand alongside Twitter, as a massively scaled social network? I call bullshit. While it’s impressive that millions of users have apparently given Mastodon a try, the product is far too slapdash and clunky to keep folks engaged. A lump of coal.
No, it isn't meant to be a #Twitter replacement. Keep your Twitter account until you no longer want it--or the company closes and the site shuts down--you can use Mastodon alongside Twitter.
And the #Fediverse networks are much more than just #Mastodon. Don't think you have experienced the network and all it has to offer if all you've done is briefly tried to use Mastodon, because you haven't experienced it.
> I’ve somehow avoided signing up for the service up until now. Largely because signing up was and is so comically obtuse — pick your server everyone, hope you choose wisely!
Have you not used e-mail? It works the same way. You pick a server, such as Gmail or Outlook dot com, and sign up. Please tell me you realize that the people you communicate with are not all on the same e-mail service that you use.
> But, but, it’s not a product, it’s a protocol. Yeah, that’s a nice thing to say. And to believe in. But I truly believe the ship has sadly sailed for such idealism in this space. Jack Dorsey can talk about how this should have been what Twitter was from the get go until he’s bluesky in the face. It’s just not going to happen. And he’s more to blame for that than most everyone else. As is he for the Elon element of this current equation. But that’s a different story.
Okay, so how about this story: Twitter has only been profitable two or three years of its entire history. Since it started, it has existed by burning through investors' funds. Eventually, with or without Elon Musk's ownership, that runs out. Without such funding, their corporate-centralized ( #corpocentric ) model cannot exist very long. And same for their centralized competitors, such as Post.news, Gab, Parler, and so on. What is left is either #federated or #peer-to-peer approaches, where no single entity is responsible for funding and managing the entire network. So whether it is the #Fediverse ( with #ActivityPub and #OStatus and their successors ) & the Federation ( with #Diaspora ) or #Bluesky, or #Twister, or #NOSTR, the eventual future of #socnets is #decentralized, if not entirely peer-to-peer unless a national government takes over Facebook and Twitter in order to provide effectively unlimited resources. It is the protocol that makes it possible for thousands or millions of instances to displace and replace one big centralized instance.
@clacke Our #KWNPSA user group chatted with the #GetTogether developer a few months ago. He said demand for self-hosted G2G instances was minimal, and event interchange even more minimal. So #ActivityPub support on G2G has stalled, and he considers G2G more or less stable and mature.
@OpenScienceFeed They call it #ActivityStream|s and Linked Data Notifications. I call it #ActivityPub. This 4 million Dollar may be the biggest public investment in AP yet.
One is not the same as the other. Are there plans to indeed consider #ActivityPub here? I mean there's huge potential to bring such new domain / app type to the #Fediverse or interconnectivity AS/LDN vs. AS/AP are different approaches.