"Is there something better coming?” I think it’s #Mastodon; and I think it’s Mastodon for a bunch of reasons. One is that the Mastodon standard was developed when the tech platforms were totally disinterested and didn’t have their fingers on the scale...."
@tchambers@devnull Fair, but the shorthand makes it sound like #ActivityPub provides @pluralistic’s “right to exit” when it doesn’t—that’s #Mastodon, and it only provides the “right to exit” to another Mastodon instance in the #fediverse. If you want to go to or from another type of service, you’re SOL.
@davew I don't think #Mastodon can catch up to #twitter as a "global townhall" or a and I think #BlueSky is more likely to be a challenge long term to Twitter solely because of the Right People gravitating there, along with Founder cred.
But I'm casting my lot with #ActivityPub. Especially #wordpress.i want to return to the blogsphere of old rather than social media silos and I think we have the tools for this now.
Here’s what I don’t get. @gruber sees the 100+ projects that use #ActivityPub, the 25,000 nodes, 11 million users—says it’s all doomed—because one server threatened to defederate due to spite.
What will be the tangible difference between the BGS that #Bluesky is making for AT protocol and a really well-connected relay operated with #ActivityPub?
@atomicpoet Is it me, or does #ATProtocol appear unnecessarily complex‽ At least for the foundational aspect of what #BlueSky is trying to do‽ #ActivityPub might not be advanced, but it’s simple enough for the average non-tech person to understand (even if they do not understand the “how” of the #Fediverse).
@gruber@jon@mattblaze
Right, move to a different node. That’s the beauty of the Fediverse.
P.S.
Bluesky started in 2019. That means it's 3 years younger than Mastodon, and 1 year younger than the W3C validation of #ActivityPub. However, BlueSky receives $13 million in Ventiure Capitalist funds while Mastodon receives $32,000 a month from Patreon, this to clarify the difference in forces on the field.
@erlend@pluralistic i’ve been wondering about this for a while. is it true that there is a right to exit in #ActivityPub? i don’t see how this is the case
> The second part of your question, “Is there something better coming?” I think it’s Mastodon; and I think it’s Mastodon for a bunch of reasons. One is that the Mastodon standard was developed when the tech platforms were totally disinterested and didn’t have their fingers on the scale. ActivityPub, which is the standard that governs Mastodon, happened in this moment of reduced scrutiny and interference.
@tim ... I'm trying to get activitypub working on my blog and I'm getting issues with webfinger and loop backs. I am self hosting so in control of everything, but haven't got a clue where to start. I'm using cloudflare CDN with aggressive custom caching rules so I be suspect that might be part of the problem.
Have you got some links I can use to troubleshoot? I remember you also had some caching issues.
@chrisshaw ah, yeah, if you are using #Cloudflare with aggressive caching you are more than likely going to have an issue with #ActivityPub on your #Wordpress site working right. Currently Cloudflare doesn't properly respect the need to serve HTML to normal visitors and JSON to ActivityPub requests. Here are a couple of resources from @dustinrue that will be helpful:
The only thing we currently don't see on #Mastodon is the media, especially local media. But I kinda don't miss the media being entangled in social media so much. It often doesn't bring any extra value to it now that I think of it.
Seeing the handles like this make me think "oh, they're on Twitter, I wonder what they are doing there" and that's about it. I probably wouldn't follow push-style posts anyway. #SocialMedia#Media
@Ciantic@rolle Kind of weird still to reinvent the wheel instead of using #ActivityPub but I suppose they want to remain in control of their protocol..
Still reading and hearing takes that Mastodon has “failed” as a Twitter alternative. Listen, it’s ok if it doesn’t work for someone—unlike Twitter, I think Mastodon requires more effort and cultivation to produce an experience that feels meaningful. It’s been worth it for me. But there is definitely a smell of…not sour grapes but people making broad assumptions based on their own experience while ignoring millions of other people. Will Mastodon top 100 million? Who knows. Who cares?
@glennf
Needs full text search with opt-out for individual postings and users with NoIndex or similar.
We're going to be wiped out or #Meta will bring their #ActivityPub compatible #Twitter replacement that's actually what the majority of people want. #Mastodon
@atomicpoet A few thoughts from a non-technical wonderer:
Does the announced profound need of recoding #Twitter imply it's going to apply and absorb AT-protocol, to federate first with #Bluesky and perhaps within itself too – on multiple server centers.
Who governs the AT-protocol, if it's not open-sourced (like #ActivityPub'ed #Fediverse )? Who owns it? Who's going to buy the core infra of such walled gardened #federation? 🤔
@atomicpoet That's some Highlander-esque zero-sum thinking from Random Guy! Too much Platform Thinking, and not enough looking-ahead Protocol Thinking.
What gets me excited about all of this are not the Mastodons, *keys, Pixelfeds, etc., but instead the idea of augmenting existing sites with ActivityPub - such as my own @freshcomics - so that when I put new releases up, that release data shows up on the feeds of folks subscribed to the hash tag for a series or a favorite creator.
#Twitter is a proprietary platform. #Facebook is a proprietary platform. #WhatsApp is a proprietary platform. #Instagram is a proprietary platform. #Telegram is a proprietary platform. #Signal is a proprietary platform. #Mastodon is a proprietary platform.
#Signal publishes its source code, but places a lot of restrictions on it: You can't use a self-compiled binary to talk to their central servers (which is why it is not in F-Droid). You can't meaningfully operate your own server because the official server won't federate with it.
#Mastodon implements #ActivityPub in many non-standard-conforming ways. And because its market share is so huge, it can force other software to copy the bugs instead of fixing them.
But it's also not entirely @gruber's fault because the media doesn't really talk about the Fediverse, and when they do, it's as a synonym for "Mastodon".
How would @gruber know about the massive development efforts to build more user-friendly alternatives to Mastodon?
No one in the media talks about the growth of *key apps, and how they're now the #2 most used Fediverse platform.
Looks like @gruber ‘s position is predicated on design, #UI, and onboarding. I have no invite for bluesky so it is clearly not an inclusive media, or open to all and inviting, and Gruber clearly does not care about inclusivity.
But even on the grounds of design, UI, ease of onboarding, there are star examples that incorporate #ActivityPub protocol and in #Fediverse. I am partial to #Calckey and calckey.social, and Calckey does provide a good example. Perhaps the design gurus and social media pundits need to browse a little more of the Fediverse before their pronouncements.
@tchambers@activitypubblueskybridge there seems to be a Conventional Wisdom that BS’s approach is incompatible with #ActivityPub-compliant fediverse members. i’m lost as to where that is coming from — to me, it seems that BS is merely composing existing technologies (many of which are W3 standards!) and packaging them into a comprehensive, values-driven protocol. [2/3]
Capturing+validating/invalidating requests, so onto processing!
Learning more about how the #Mastodon actor files can vary versus other clients
For example preferredUsername in the #Mastodon actor record is unique per instance and ties to #webfinger but there is no guarantee of uniqueness or existence per #activitypub docs
So I'll be storing by actor URI and trying to tie back to the webfinger format for "pretty ID name" when possible
Bei der #ARD wird es langsam ernst. Die Instanz ard.social (nicht dev.ard.social!) ist jetzt online. Und laut @mho könnte sich die nächsten Tage bei dem Thema etwas bewegen...
Software that does not use the #ActivityPub protocol, such as Twitter, Facebook, will not see their posts. So while your Twitter friends won't be able to see your posts on your wall, they won't be able to see your posts, which are uploaded to your server's wall. For example, this post will not be visible on Twitter or Facebook, but will be visible on Mastodon or other fediverse servers.
Mammoth for Mastodon is now available to download for free on the App Store! 🎉
It has the easiest way to join Mastodon with a great onboarding flow and no need to think about what server to join, it’s full-featured with complete Mastodon feature parity, and fully customizable to tweak it just the way you want and make it yours.
Welcome to a new edition of the roundup. For the next few editions I´m experimenting with adding some more context to most news, to help you give a better understanding of why all the links are there. Lets get to it!
Crypto spam
Mastodon.social experienced a crypto spam wave attack. The attack took roughly an hour, and was one of the largest spam wave attack lately. This event brought multiple discussions to light again: the fear that mastodon.social is getting too big, leading to a re-centralization of the fediverse. This discussion has become significantly more pronounced since Mastodon decided to suggest mastodon.social as the server for people who register via the official Mastodon apps.
While this fear is understandable, the spam attack hightlights the conflicting forces in the debates about (de)centralization of servers. During the spam wave, an admin of another server publicly stated that they wished to be able to block mastodon.social during the attack, but couldn’t because of how large the server is. Other server admins opted to mute mastodon.social instead.
The difference between muting and blocking is highly relevant in this case: muting allows messages to pass between people who already follow each other. Blocking permanently separates the servers, meaning all follow and followers between accounts on the servers are lost permanently. This got someservers in trouble when they realized they did actually block mastodon.social instead of mute, and lost all their follow-connections from mastodon.social.
In other news
Bluesky continues to be a large subject of discussion, both on culture and about interoperability. The biggest change of this week is update to the Ikuradon app (Android and iOS). This Japanese app is a client for Mastodon, and the latest beta adds Bluesky support, allowing you to read messages from your Bluesky account all in the same app.
The Universeodon server has updated their signup process, helping people with the onboarding process and getting them to follow some accounts. Any process that helps new users with onboarding is always great to see. It also is an indication of a slowly building trend of servers trying to individually distinguish themselves with the technical services they offer.
The discover.fedified tool is rapidly getting upgrades, and now all Mastodon users can sign up for the directory. These discovery tools have historically been overwhelmingly focused on Mastodon, so it’ll be interesting to see if they can make the switch towards server-agnostic fediverse discovery tools. In an early encouraging sign is the fediverse.info directory, which is now advertizing that it supports Calckey too. The VerifiedX project (such as verifiedjournalist.org)is now expanding to third party applications as well, with the verified.thecanadian.social directory.
Mozilla is opening up the beta for their mozilla.social mastodon server. The announcement post is worth reading, and so is the coverage from The Verge. They position themselves clearly on the issue of content moderation. They are not trying to build a neutral platform, but instead are making opiniated choices about content moderation, with the goal of providing a nicer place to be on the internet. They do also mention the possibility of giving their server some UI love. What is not mentioned is their signup flow, as you log in directly with your Firefox account. This will make signing up to the fediverse significantly easier once the server gets out of beta.
Mastodon makes changes to the signup flow, setting mastodon.social as the default server if you sign up during the apps. This choice went live a few weeks ago, and has continued to be majorly controversial for a variety of reasons. In the end the argument is best summarized as a choice of decentralization versus ease of signup: the new design increases both centralization as well as user inflow, and it is a matter of personal preference to what extend they feel it’s worth making this tradeoff.
The blogpost also announces quote posts, search and groups, three features that are also sources of major discussion. It’ll be interesting to see in what format they will be shipped, and in what timeframe. One of the more interesting responses is by GoToSocial who sees it as a cutoff point regarding them supporting the Mastodon API.
The links
IFTAS (International Federation of Trust and Safety) has put out an open call for 12 active moderators to join their moderation panel.
@supakaity, a contributor to Calckey who also runs her own fork, is experimenting with adding Content Warnings to boosted and quoted posts. Calckey is under rapid development, and new features that help with user safety are great to see.
@dansupposits a question on which servers should be included as being part of the fediverse, when servers host illegal content.
@erlend has put out two blog posts this week that are both worth reading. Juicy clients is about how clients can become real clients for the fediverse and not just Mastodon. Sense-making in federated discourse is about how to organise information in an overload of posts that are hard to organise.
Erin Kissane’s (@kissane) essay ‘Blue Skies over Mastodon‘ has generated quite a lot of discourse on the feeds. It is an excellent critique on Mastodon’s issues with user focused product design, and what can be learned from Bluesky.
The poll
Annalee Newitz posted two polls with peoples biggest fears regarding the fediverse. The responses where quite varied with no excessive winners, which indicates that people see and fear quite a few potential struggles that can hurt the future of the fediverse. The result that stood out most is that of monetization, which got by far the lowest amount of the votes. People are clearly more worried about culture, such as volunteer moderator burnout than about building businesses on top of the fediverse.