ActivityPub and the End of Walled Gardens, with Evan Prodromou

cross-posted from: flipboard.video/…/b04f64e0-79a5-491a-876f-85e4eca…

There was a time where people couldn’t email each other unless they were using the same email client. That changed when developers came up with a protocol that made it so it didn’t matter if you were using AOL, CompuServe or Prodigy — it just worked.

The same analogy explains how things work in the Fediverse, an open-source system of interconnected, interoperable social networks. The Fediverse is powered by a protocol called ActivityPub, which provides an API for creating, updating and deleting content across several platforms.

What does ActivityPub unlock for product builders and tech entrepreneurs? How will social networks without walled gardens change our relationship to content and to each other? Why does any of this matter?

All that’s covered in this episode of Dot Social, a podcast about the world of decentralized social media, aka the Fediverse. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be the internet’s next wave. Mike is a true believer in the open social web and what it will unlock for how we connect, communicate and innovate online.

In this episode, Mike talks to Evan Prodromou, one of the co-authors of ActivityPub. Evan is a long-time entrepreneur, technologist and advocate of open source software. He’s also the Director of Open Technology at the Open Earth Foundation.

shortwavesurfer,

That was a good interview

paraphrand,

Quick put up walls!

SomethingBurger,

And make Lemmygrad pay for them!

sramder,
@sramder@lemmy.world avatar

Um… Compuserve, AOL, etc. were not email clients, nor did they come first. Email already interoperated just fine, these companies by and large added compatibility/internet email gateways as it became increasingly clear they would become irrelevant without it.

downpunxx,
downpunxx avatar

this, lol, wtf

troyunrau,
@troyunrau@lemmy.ca avatar

And even before that FIDOnet was a thing. But the nerdy details and the narrative don’t match so…

sramder,
@sramder@lemmy.world avatar

FIDONet, sheesh… I got warez to download ;-)

troyunrau,
@troyunrau@lemmy.ca avatar

Kids these days and their fancy usenet

sramder,
@sramder@lemmy.world avatar

alt.binaries.warez baby! Apparently you can swim in the same river twice :-)

pelespirit,
@pelespirit@sh.itjust.works avatar

I really enjoyed this interview, but I think they should make more clear that they plan on the fediverse (in my words) being kind of like a small town. That there will be advertising on billboards, retail storefronts, etc. It’s not going to be just volunteer ran instances, that huge companies are going to want to advertise and be part of it and is planned to be a part of it. Everyone should be prepared for that.

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

This will happen naturally if the fediverse grows. It’s on us to keep the worker-run instances as viable alternatives so that the corporate players can’t take their toys and leave the sandbox without their users having an alternative.

Docus,

We urgently need the ability to move your user account to another instance for that to work. At the moment, it’s not easy to move to another Lemmy instance, I would have to redo subscriptions, blocklists and likely pick a different username.

Unforeseen,

This is now available as of 0.19. Before that you needed a 3rd party tool like lasim.

User data export/import

Users can now export their data (community follows, blocklists, profile settings), and import it again on another instance. This can be used for account migrations and also as a form of backup. The export format is designed to remain unchanged for a long time. You can make regular exports, and if the instance becomes unavailable, register a new account and import the data. This way you can continue using Lemmy seamlessly.

Docus,

Good news, thanks for sharing. Not sure if any iOS apps support it though.

pelespirit,
@pelespirit@sh.itjust.works avatar

I agree with that, but how? I don’t think we’re prepared for how they’re going to try take over or what that’s going to look like. If you have insight into that, that would be awesome.

I’m glad I watched it, and I now see that they want it to be a huge city with neighborhoods, which is a great goal. I don’t think the huge corps like meta, google, x, tinder, airnbnb, ebay, etc., are going to have the same goals.

avidamoeba, (edited )
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

I agree with that, but how? I don’t think we’re prepared for how they’re going to try take over or what that’s going to look like. If you have insight into that, that would be awesome.

I don’t know about insight but I think we need the equivalent of Wikimedia Foundation that runs these kinds of services. Personally, I find non-profit/coop/both instances to use and fund them/persuade others to fund them. For example Mastodon.social is run by the non-profit behind Mastodon itself. Funding it funds one of the largest Mastodon instances and the software development effort. Lemmy.ca - my home instance is being converted to a non-profit org from and ad-hoc op. I donate monthly to that too. I’m also contributing to the Lemmy devs. I can afford to spare $30/mo on the fediverse and I do. Not everyone can but the ones who can should do it. The more people do this, the closer we’re gonna get to a model where it’ll cost some inconsequential amount of money for most people who donate - e.g. $2-3/mo. Having a set of financially stable hosts and development should provide the reliable alternative to corpo instances we need.

pelespirit,
@pelespirit@sh.itjust.works avatar

That’s a great way to look at it, keep the solid ones running.

How do you feel about the government alerts, schools and universities helping with that? In my ignorant opinion, it seems like those solid infrastructures would help keep it grounded too.

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

I think you’re right. Public institutions are likely good candidates for running these kinds of services, whether they’re the major players or not. If the Government of Canada decided to run a Lemmy instance, I’d be on it.

cheese_greater,

Its like email

This this this. No scary, no new. Like email 🐒

LWD, (edited )

deleted_by_author

    •
    cheese_greater,

    block private email senders

    F-in shameless, I can haz identity always now?

    TheEntity,

    Do you have any links to articles on such cases? I'm interested in reading more about it.

    LWD, (edited )

    deleted_by_author

    •
    TheEntity,

    Wow, that's some amazing blind zeal, especially in the second link. It's so disturbing to read.

    9point6,

    I might be wrong but this might be a home grown lemmy paranoia—I’ve seen a load of posts shouting about how proton is a PR away from being added to a spam list, and then it turning out that said list has 4 stars on GitHub and a maintainer that’s not shown up for 3 years.

    (Of course the massive caveat that I may have just missed the real shit)

    micka190,

    That’s pretty much all it’s been, yeah. Feels like spam more than anything.

    scytale,

    I don’t have the link right now but Tutanota had a blogpost recently about Microsoft marking tutanota.com emails as spam/junk automatically.

    avidamoeba, (edited )
    @avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

    I’m really excited about the marketplaces. We desperately need a federated, trustworthy version of Kijiji/Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace, perhaps even EBay. These are important public services used by a lot of people and have been historically underdeveloped, underserved and overexploited by their centralised stewards.

    cheese_greater,

    God ya. This is going to be fucking huge shit!!

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