I've come to the conclusion that the strictly reverse chronological timeline enforced by #Mastodon is a horrible idea, and the more I use Mastodon the more I'm convinced of this. Before anyone jumps me for misunderstanding my complaint, I'm not going to advocate for an algorithmic-manipulated timeline: I'll argue in favor of something completely different.
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As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have some hope that #Vocata by @Natureshadow <https://codeberg.org/Vocata/vocata> may become a building block for Fediverse platforms not affected by this limitation, but I think that most importantly would be to see a mindset change by Fediverse platform developers, and seeing where development efforts go to, I'm not too sure we're going to see it anytime soon.
I want to convince myself to write an agnostic #ActivityPub server, and I have a killer name for it that both hits the topic and can take advantage of a new TLD...
The idea for this one is: it has a wide-ranging backend based on AP & the AP C2S API with a smaller server-specific API for what doesn't fit there (I think it'll be mostly admin stuff, like moderating instances). The frontend would be decoupled and the default frontend would also expose the Mastodon API because of course!
#Vocata is purely an ActivityPub server, so Fediverse client/servers can be separated. Very interesting project that could develop new ways of engaging with the Fediverse (the possibility of this sort of thing is what makes the Fediverse so much more interesting than any platform…) https://codeberg.org/Vocata/vocata
#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?
@evan Interesting. I would have thought the opposite would be more common. #Vocata allows Add/Remove to collections that are public or "owned" by the activity's actor. So a remote actor would only be able to modify local public collections. I plan to experiment with implementing Mastodon-style "lists" with local private collections, updated by a local actor via C2S. The "list" collections would be used to maintain custom "timeline" collections exposed through the actor's "streams" field.
Ma piuttosto di parlare dei padroni, vi lancio uno spunto di riflessione su ActivityPub. Non sarebbe carino se, come previsto dal protocollo, si potessero sviluppare i client in maniera indipendente dai server? Quindi ad esempio fare in modo che da una stessa App X io possa accedere a una (o più) istanze mastodon, friendica, pixelfield, ...
@aaronwinstonsmith#Vocata sta venendo sviluppato per produrre un server agnostico, che è il primo passo in questa direzione perché se il server ti sminchia i contenuti non c'è client agnostico che tenga
If so, it would be good for platforms to start moving towards it (possibly initially supporting it side-by-side with the existing APIs). If not, it would be good for the C2S protocol to be improved (and/or better specified, if it's a problem of underspecification), so it could be adopted as above.
So, #askFedi question: are there platforms that support the C2S protocol too? Maybe #GoToSocial or #Vocata? How's that working out?
I’m once again reminded of how deeply I despise the default behavior of this (and damn near every other) social media platform to crop photos to a pre-set aspect ratio in previews. (Some clients allow viewers to disable this, but that’s outside the control of the poster, who has no way to predict how your work will render)
The reasonable behavior to conserve screen real estate in previews is to downsize. Cropping alters the image, often in ways that destroy its meaning.
With #Vocata taking shape (two hours away and three MRs to review 🎉), it's time to decide on my first client app to use it:
I want to make an #ActivityPub social app for sports and outdoor activities, starting with #climbing (using some ideas from the ugly and privacy-unaware "Vertical Life" app).
My #ActivityPub server #Vocata is rapidly improving and approaching the milestone of 250 commits, very much thanks to @steve who has started to systematically test it and fix bugs.
This #Mastodon / #email bridge <https://tacobelllabs.net/@nkizz/110340426573847934> by @nkizz is just brilliant, but you know what would absolutely ROCK? A #Fediverse server that had native support for #IMAP.
While we're on the topic, I wonder if anybody has thought about building a client with an UX inspired by Usenet newsreaders (personally, MicroPlanet Gravity was one of the few things I missed from Windows when I switched to Linux, would love to see something like that for Mastodon.)
The more I read the #ActivityPub spec the more I see it as an extension of #email and #Usenet protocols. By this I mean I have the feeling that it would be possible to roundtrip e.g. email through AP “losslessly”. Which opens interesting possibilities when considering the development of platform-agnostic AP servers like #Vocata https://codeberg.org/Vocata/vocata
Now I'm dreaming of a client that handles emails, news and AP …