Every time I take a stab at building for the Fediverse, I'm immediately drained for motivation by the ambiguities and contradictions of the AP/AS2 family of specs.
Oh, you want to do some validation of the actor property of activities posted to the Outbox? Good luck. It can have any number of values, and can even (per examples in the AS2 spec) mention actors from different instances.
#Ghost#ActivityPub#Decentralization#OpenWeb: "They say the best way to predict the future is to create it, so two weeks ago we shared our intention to connect Ghost with the ActivityPub Network to bring back the open web. We were delighted when our ideas managed to spread even further and wider than we'd imagined, and that so many of you signed up to be a part of the journey."
Look at how @mikedev designed events in @streams! I would love to see this implemented in other software. @julian have you thought about how @nodebb would display an #ActivityPub event yet? Does @silverpill's @mitra have any support? What about @grunfink's SNAC?
This feels like a natural next step for @mastowatch but the entire design of the app is structured around Mastodon instance data. I think if someone were going to do something similar for #activitypub at large, it would have to be a different app that is more generalized.
That said, I would love to see someone take the idea and do something for every kind of ActivityPub server/software. I would use it so much. I would probably even add a link to it within @mastowatch.
Bluesky enthusiasts are stating that Bluesky has ”plans” to make ATProto universal and transfer it to W3C or the like. Well, there is no evidence that Bluesky wants to give up control or the protocol is going to be widely adopted after 5 years of development so forgive me being sceptical. The story is a bit different with ActivityPub.
Nel 2024, per la prima volta, si ha finalmente la sensazione di avere una massa critica di persone e piattaforme interessate a ridare vita a Internet per riportare in vita ciò che abbiamo perso e creare qualcosa di nuovo. Solo nell'ultima settimana ci sono state conversazioni fra #Mastodon, #Flipboard, #TheVerge, #Buttondown, #WriteFreely e diversi co-autori della specifica #ActivityPub. C'è la sensazione palpabile che questo possa essere l'anno del web aperto!
Both Rachel and Peter suggest that some moderation functionality could/should become part of the protocol stack. #AtProto does composable moderation and that is really cool. Peter hopes that #ActivityPub may learn from it and evolve in this direction.
"In 2024, for the first time, it finally feels like we have a critical mass of people and platforms who are interested in rewilding the internet to bring back what we lost, and create something new. ... There's a palpable feeling that this just might be the year of the open web."
It's hard to imagine #StackOverflow made their decision without considering the fate #Twitter and #Reddit suffered. That they willingly chose to burn the remaining goodwill they had with their users is bewildering.
Any social web platform could implement E2EE for themselves, but a standardized format will enable users of different Fediverse services to DM each other through the lens of the social platform of their choice.
If you're a #fedidev working on an #ActivityPub/Mastodon-compatible server, don't forget that the WebFinger JRD media type is "application/jrd+json" and not "application/json". The early @feditest test results show this is a common mistake.
It occurs to me that while #LinkedData is a fairly bad choice as the extensibility mechanism for #ActivityPub protocol, it should be in theory a rather good choice for the knowledge network and navigation thereof, of the content aggregating into the various federated SO instances.
TBL once asked about using #SolidProject to create a #FAQ and I suggested adding federation to the mix:
Former CEO of Twitter wanted to build a social protocol no-one can control, like SMTP or HTTP for social media. Bluesky’s ATProto was supposed to be an open source protocol that Twitter could eventually utilize, but then Musk happened and Bluesky started taking it to the wrong direction and everything fell apart in Dorsey’s mind.
A very revealing interview. I now see even more future in W3C’s ActivityPub.
I must wonder… if Dorsey truly wants to build something open, non-commercial and decentralized, why doesn’t he even look at the ActivityPub? Why not help it thrive? What’s all that fuss about Bluesky and Nostr?