Looks like #Nextcloud Social might be getting a big update soon. Nextcloud Social was my intro to the #fediverse many years ago before the Social project went stale. It's not #Mastodon on the software side, but an #ActivityPub implementation that is trying to achieve a similar goal. That means you should theoretically be able to interact with #Mastodon soon using your current #Nextcloud instance as a server.
So, I decided that I am going to write a #Mastodon compatible #ActivityPub server in Rust and I am going to toot about my journey as I do this. So, warning to my followers, a lot of my posts are going to be development centric LOL. I could do this in C#, the language I know well, but I want to do rust just for the pure fun of it. #rustlang#programming
I can generate an RSS feed as a static file and host it using a number of free providers, like GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, Netlify, etc.
But as far as I know, implementing ActivityPub requires a running server, listening for requests and actually holding state, right? Is there any way to implement “half” of #ActivityPub? Is there any way to implement it with static files?
I should probably just/also read the docs, but I wanted to get a live take, too.
Anyone know of a #Wordpress theme with a header image that actually works with #activitypub so that it becomes the Mastodon header image? I’m new to this and haven’t gotten it to work on my blog account: @bryan
I do think it's a victory because in the end, the fediverse will always have the means to not federate with #meta but the fact such big player adopt the protocol is going to bring a furry of other actors to potentially adopt the protocol, it's like "email" being adopted, yes some emails providers are bad but the internet won by having a common protocol for one to one interaction. The same can happen for #activitypub!
A small reflection that has no intention of hurting anyone's opinion.
We all have our own mail provider here, each one more "private" and "secure" than the other. And we don't care if people use Gmail, as long as we can use the provider of our choice, and we can communicate with the majority, who use Gmail.
It's the same and will be the same with #Mastodon/ #Fediverse/ #ActivityPub, as long as we can communicate with other, what do you care who has the biggest?
There's one main thing I like about #BlueSky, #Nostr, #Cwtch, and the in-development P2P-ified #Matrix over #ActivityPub and Matrix as they're generally deployed now: your ID doesn't depend on DNS.
I've not been in the Fediverse very long, but I've already seen people lose their entire social graph because an admin unilaterally took down an instance. When you tie your identity to DNS, you're at the mercy of the domain owner and every point of control over the DNS as a whole, including the court systems in every authoritarian jurisdiction. Not your keys, not your identity.
I like the admins of my instance here, but I see the toll it takes on them running it even with the community's contributions. It's a lot of pressure and a lot of power to have that much control over identity and trust for your users.
I don't think we have to wholesale move to other protocols, though. The beauty of open networks is the freedom to build bridges. When people do migrate between them, it can and should be as smooth as migrating between ActivityPub instances in the happy path, and remain fully interoperable.
The one thing I do think the AT Protocol is better at than #ActivityPub is data portability. Being built-in at the protocol layer so that you don’t have to do the migration shit (which doesn’t bring your posts) is better. It just is. I think ActivityPub has more potential overall for the social web beyond just Twitter clones, but that part of #ARProtocol is better.
Neat interview on today's VergeCast episode by @pierce with @mike about the potential for ActivityPub, Mastodon, the Fediverse, and decentralized social media. McCue's description of Mastodon as a 2-way RSS (2-way streaming), well, I'm still ruminating about it. :mastodon: 🤯 🎧
"ActivityPub creates an open social graph for the web."
And we get an explanation from Nilay Patel as to why he still isn't on Mastodon.
Here's what I expect, and/or kinda hope, for when (or if) Project Barcelona comes to the Fediverse.
A lot of queer-oriented servers will block it immediately. It'll be done to minimize their visibility to the less-moderated wild west of Instagram users.
Instances like fosstodon.org which are aimed at the widest audience possible will likely keep them federated, at least until their moderation inevitably falls far enough below Fediverse standards.
Other instances might end up defederating them for being corporate, mostly anarchist/anti-capitalist instances like Kolektiva or Astral Camp. These are most of the servers that have defederated raspberrypi.social.
Most other instances will probably not consider it worth the effort to block the instance and will keep it open until the slightest hint of trouble.
If #bluesky and the #atprotocol fail to fulfill their promises, I predict there will be another. And another after that one. All funded and pushed by rich bastards with lots of connections. And we little people who have pushed the #fediverse for years will all be expected to give them our attention and not be critical. All while this confusion slows adoption of #ActivityPub by journalists and governments and developers and the decentralization moment passes yet again.
The #ActivityPub community both overestimates and underestimates it's actual power currently.
E.g Sitting in a corner and threatening not to federate with new apps/instances is not very powerful.
E.g. Recognizing that #ActivityPub is uniquely well positioned to evolve into the single, trusted, comprehensive protocol apps use to send human activity-related messages is very, very powerful.
"... there’s a growing set of people who will tell you the future isn’t #Mastodon but what it represents: a scaled #ActivityPub-based social platform." Indeed, nicely stated by The Verge.