The #SocialCG started a task force for forums and link-sharing services. I'm so excited to see it going! I love the innovation happening in this space.
With NodeBB, Discourse and Flarum, this makes three #forum software that can now participate in the #Fediverse. The ongoing #SocialCG meeting will certainly endorse the new working group dedicated to topic-centric fediversity, along with @lemmy and @kbin.
A rant about social protocols Introduction
Recently, I read an article that talked about that someone, tried to do a new platform called “Content Nation”. This is a German platform that allows people to write content (to be honest, I don’t really know what it does.) and publish it. And recently, the creators tried to implement the ActivityPub protocol. They did so by using the official documentation provided by @w3c.
The problem was that the last time the official documentation was updated, was in 23 January 2018. So, this means that a lot of new standards that other platforms like Mastodon, Misskey, etc... use are not written in there. But this isn’t the fault of the service developers, this is the fault of the W3C that hasn’t been an update to the protocol officially to support the new standards in the industry such as Webfinger, SharedInbox, Privacy Scopes, and Opt-Out for Search…
The thing, is that this led to a lot of people thinking that this site was some kind of scraper and started making the crawler crash or, even worse, someone tried to load CP inside the platform. BlueSky
Recently, BlueSky opened its AT protocol for everyone to use and federate, due to this, there has been a bit of a discussion inside these platforms. This made me think, why did BlueSky feel the necessity to make another protocol? If there is one already, why do we need another one that competes, wasn’t the objective of protocols to allow interoperability?
So, I did a bit of digging and I found two things. The first one is that they wanted so solve a few things that AP does not support officially (here are the main points, not all of them):
Account portability. A person’s online identity should not be owned by corporations with no accountability to their users. With the AT Protocol, you can move your account from one provider to another without losing any of your data or social graph.
Algorithmic choice. Algorithms dictate what we see and who we can reach. We must have control over our algorithms if we're going to trust in our online spaces. The AT Protocol includes an open algorithms mode so users have more control over their experience.
A lot of these problems are already present on ActivityPub for a long time. The account portability of ActivityPub let’s say it’s not intuitive. You have to do a lot of things and even then, there are some things like the posts that you make or the favourites that don’t transfer (in the case of favourites you need to transfer them manually, the same for blocks and mutes).
Also, right now 99% if not all software that uses ActivityPub, does not have an algorithm that orders content for you to see, but shows you everything in chronological order (I don’t know if its intentional or if it’s a limit of AP) and the only thing you have to discover topics is trough hashtags that maybe someone forgot to tag.
Furthermore, not to mention that on ActivityPub, you are at the mercy of the server moderators, so this means that if you know someone that is on an instance that is blocked by yours, you won’t be able to talk to them unless you change the instance, which in a way it’s not very decentralized. The other protocols
By doing research, I realized that there are a lot of other protocols (for example Nostr) that have its own implementation of things maybe there are some that are bridged and other not.
Such protocols have different features, for example Nostr allows you to suggest content edit to other people’s posts, move your content easily, etc. How can we solve this?
First, we have to know why all these other companies make their own. I must say, that most of them probably do because AP does not allow customization of posts or the adding of new features for everyone and the fact that it’s not been updated for 6 whole years makes matters worse.
What the developers want, is a protocol that lets them create wherever they want and add everything the want, for example the edit thing that I said the Nostr supports, the only way to add it to AP, would be or only on your software or find another software that is willing to implement that feature, the rest of the market is left behind as well as the users that depending on what it is, they don’t understand.
My solution to this problem would be to add some kind of per user plugin system directly to the AP that allows for devs to implement add-ons that do with the JSON strings that add buttons or scripts at least to send and receive data. As well as to add some kind of CSS support for the posts and profiles. Of course, the point of these is that if you make a platform, and you are the only one using these characteristics, well… but in case that everybody wants to use it and everybody makes their own plugins it would be chaos.
For this, the solution I proposed would be like something you add while the W3C updates the protocol to support a very popular feature. #socialprotocols#nostr#activitypub#W3C#ATprotocol#rant#blogpost#ContentNation
> this is the fault of the W3C that hasn’t been an update to the protocol officially to support the new standards.
There is no "THE" #W3C that maintains or is responsible for evolving the #ActivityPub related specs. There's the #SocialCG, a community group, with representatives (read: volunteers) from the same grassroots movement that is engaged with the #Fediverse, i.e. fedizens.
Currently sleeping the sleep of the righteous, @andrew was up way too late building tools to fend off the current wave of fedi spam, playing whack-a-mole with bad accounts, and getting fedi friends up and running with their own blocklists.
I’d like to convene a discussion this week or next to do a mini retro on this attack and some #designthinking work around fedi spam fighting tools. If you’re interested in the discussion, @ me your email or send one to spamretro at hypatia dot ca and I’ll loop you in on it 🙏
Would love to have a proper UR/UX person on the call, I’m a mere amateur at that part 😅
For #ActivityPub the question of "Why use #LinkedData?" has never been answered. There should be clear merits to wade through all the complexity that this choice brings, right?
Yes, its ultra flexible, and you can define your own semantic #ontologies, and theoretically it could provide a robust extension mechanism to AP protocol. Except that right now it doesn't.
What's the vision of a Linked Data #Fediverse? What great innovative #SocialNetworking#UX would it bring, that makes it worthwhile?
I feel that it is important that #SocialHub does not assert authority. As a dev community on #ActivityPub it should be an attractive place to be part of and interact with others. That's all. So it is just one hub in the decentralized ecosystem.
We seek collab with other communities, and have a liaison with the #SocialCG.
We facilitate the #FEP Process, but the process itself stands on its own.
So parentheses in 3-stage Standards Process: Ecosystem --> FEP (SocialHub) --> W3C.
Followed-up to my 3-months old proposal for a bottom-up 3-stage Standards Process to guarantee a decentralized and open ecosystem. A process that goes:
This has urgency, or corporate takeover is assured!
“Any decentralized [ecosystem] requires a centralized substrate, and the more decentralized the approach is the more important it is that you can count on the underlying system.”
@davew nobody can define who accesses the fediverse. It's an open system, based on DNS, and there's no gatekeeper.
Meta is a member of the #SocialCG and is standards-oriented. They are very interested in finding standard ways to implement Threads features like reply controls.
It’s ok to hold two opposing opinions in your mind at the same time, if the larger truth is more important. I don’t trust Zuck / Meta, but I also want them to federate with Mastodon. Even if they play power games later on, you can always jump to an instance that blocks them. The power is with you, the “user”, and that is what the web started out as and always should be. Besides, if it all turns to custard just start an indie blog and/or sail the world like the Scuttlebutt guy from NZ.
With the uptick in #Fediverse interest there's a similar increase of activity by people interested to improve the situation.
#ActivityPub is relatively unique in how a W3C standard arose from a grassroots movement. Unfortunately grassroots also means disorganized in everyone for themselves FOSS projects. The more people see it is a win-win to spend time beyond project scope to #FEP's and #SocialHub / #SocialCG, the better. To maintain that technology substrate and evolve.
What is a minimal subset that would allow us to treat the @'context object as a set of extensions rather than a set of processing directives while still remaining useful?
Basically, you could have a "mastodon postprocessor" with all of the logic there.
I have a bunch of thoughts and have validated some, but I'm interested in the experience of those who have banged their head against this problem. Any ideas? Does that make sense as a goal?
I proposed on #SocialHub that going forward we (W3C #SocialCG) might consider #ActivityPub to be a JSON-first spec, instead of #LinkedData-first. It should be a change of 'stance' and need not break backwards-compat (it likely won't or be low-impact as there aren't many LD impls).
This different approach would entail that JSON-first devs get a sane extension mechanism, and that independent of that LD devs can go the extra mile.
It appears the prevailing mechanism for DMs over #ActivityPub is just direct Notes. Misskey/Firefish mark it as a DM with a non-standard field. Pixelfed either doesn't have any DM distinguisher, or it uses a different non-standard field. Pleroma uses a non-standard type ChatMessage and appears to apply certain special logistics to it (i.e. only one person, and it must be a single Actor, may be specified, and only in the to field).
Maybe the mechanism for Babilejo will aim for maximum compatibility with "type": ["Note", "ChatMessage", "https://joinbabilejo.org/ns/type#ChatMessage"], the Misskey special field, and treating the Babilejo ChatMessage type (and the Pleroma ChatMessage type) as a descendant of Note. That way, I don't have to have any special compatibility mode (as long as all the popular projects are spec-compliant, accepting multiple types...)
> (as long as all the popular projects are spec-compliant, accepting multiple types...)
Which I am afraid is not the case. This #ActivityPub multi-type support pops up often in discussions, and is something to be properly addressed at #SocialHub / #SocialCG in terms of best-practices and guidelines yet.
I had a great #TPAC. In two days, we moved along three important topics: extensions, testing and data portability. We started two new task forces and started the draft of a new CG report.
The #ActivityPub world is moving forward, and I'm excited to see where we go.
@mnot yes! We had a #SocialCG meeting on Tuesday and then breakout sessions on social web testing and data portability on Wednesday. And we had a fediverse meetup on Tuesday evening!
I think it's been mentioned before but I just want to make sure that everyone here knows that we are having THREE #SocialCG#Swicg#ActivityPub sessions at #TPAC next week.
TPAC is a hybrid working event for the W3C. Some of us will be in person in Seville. If you're not, you can call in and participate remotely.
Just launched: the initial version of Postmarks, a new ActivityPub platform that lets you save, tag and share bookmarks on the Fediverse! More info on my blog: https://motd.co/2023/09/postmarks-launch/
I booked my flights, train tickets and registration for #tpac2023 , the @w3c working conference in Seville, Spain in September. We're having in-person meeting space for the #SocialCG plus breakout rooms for Data Portability and Test Suite. It's going to be awesome.
Ouch. The Washington Post has this piece: “Twitter rival #Mastodon rife with child-#abuse material, study finds”. The author does not understand the implications of a decentralized network at all (“mastodon did not respond”) but imho that’s on us, not on them: we have not done the work to communicate it.
The #fediverse needs a #PR team that can react quickly on press like this.
Well shit... Meta just entered the W3C Social Web Incubator chat:
"What can Meta do to support the fediverse? How can we ensure our entry to this ecosystem is a positive thing that helps grow the community? How can we support this standard? These are the questions in my mind, and I'm really keen to start discussing this with all of you."
In the latest move #Meta has joined the #W3C#SocialCG - the community group that created the #ActivityPub Recommendation - in the form of their employee Ben Savage, who is already involved in another community group, together with #Mozilla
#ActivityPub implementers and #SocialCG folks: the AP spec talks about using the Add and Remove activities for writing to local collections. I find it unusual; I think it's the only example of a remote user being able to write to local data. Are there any implementations that actually do this?
I and others have talked a lot about the #Facebook / #Meta#FediVerse issue over the past few days, analyzing their strategy, and possible responses, and why pre-emptive blocking isn't an effective measure.
This leaves the question of "what should we do?" So....
ITT: actually effective measures for building the resilience of the FediVerse and #ActivityPub, informed by the experience of the #OSS movement.
So with the surge of traffic that's coming to #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse, I stumbled into a conversation about updating ActivityPub. I'm curious what people with a better #Dev and #admin background think should be changed in regard to an #ActivityPub2 since the original standard was released in 2018 and the Fediverse has changed dramatically since then.
@Valon_Blue the majority of related conversations happen via activitypub.rocks site; there is also #fedidevs group and fedidevs.org working to do some practical documentation on interop etc. As others have noted, the #SocialCG is one of the places to participate via w3c as well.
Today's question for a resilient #Fediverse is whether various different initiatives are willing to collaborate and cross-pollinate, while keeping their independence.
There's great opportunity to increase the cohesion of the #GrassrootsFedi#ActivityPub developer community and creating strong joins:
> If the people responsible for the standard are willing to go into such discussions instead of just demanding that the standard is the only thing that counts, things get better!
Here's a flaw. There's no one in charge. We have a grassroots movement. Now.. #SocialCG might be revived.. there's activity in that direction. But that needs to happen first, and volunteers found to do the chores, put in time and energy.