Good read on the importance of #ActivityPub and its potential to reshape the web
Can ActivityPub save the internet?
"if ActivityPub really takes off, there might not need to be a next big thing at all. A couple of dominant platforms would be replaced by millions of interoperable smaller ones"
@rysiek@KelsonV I'm all for the growing hype around ActivityPub.
From The Verge:
"The hottest new thing in social isn’t vertical video, and it’s not AI-driven algorithmic feeds. Instead, it’s a little-known, years-old protocol called ActivityPub that could help rewire the entire social fabric of the internet.
"In recent months, a number of tech companies have thrown their resources into ActivityPub and what’s now known as “the Fediverse.” Tumblr is working with ActivityPub, as are Flipboard, Medium, Mozilla, and even Meta. There’s now an official WordPress plug-in for ActivityPub, which will enable the protocol for something like half the internet all at once. Developers are using ActivityPub to build new and different takes on YouTube, Instagram, and much more. ActivityPub is everywhere! ActivityPub!"
The tech industry is abuzz about a new standard for social networking that is more open, more user-centric, and potentially more powerful than #Twitter and #Facebook. But we’ve been here before.
"... 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.
@J12t there's an interesting idea, that is not unique to this article, that I've heard elsewhere: your social activity graph follows you around from app to app when using activity pub. It's like the email protocol. Your contacts an email follow you around regardless of which provider you use. They never constrained inside of a walled garden. #activitypub#fedeverse
"I was there in the early days of the web, and this whole thing with ActivityPub is as big a deal as HTML was back then. This is the single biggest opportunity I’ve seen for the web since the dawn of the web." 100% agree with @mike.
So #bluesky is on #Android, but it's still just one server? And they claim to be so much better at decentralization than #ActivityPub? More and more evidence to me that they are just trying to slow down the #fediverse.
@atomicpoet Our next challenge is to make #ActivityPub cool, not by imitating proprietary services that already exist, but by inventing brand new experiences that are compelling enough to attract a whole new cohort of users.
I'm working on Vervis, the ForgeFed reference implementation written in Haskell. Refactoring the codebase into an actor model architecture, i.e. a system of objects that communicate by sending messages to each other's message queues.
Progress so far: I created a simple library that implements a local actor system, and plugged Vervis's #ActivityPub implementation into it, to add the network part. Started porting the Person actor to the new system.
I started the #delightful project. It's similar to Awesome project on #Github by Sindre Sorhus, but only curates lists related to #FOSS, #OpenScience and #OpenData resources. If @abundance wants that, they might maintain their own sublist and be part of https://delightful.club that is steadily growing.
The real magic of the #fediverse is collaboration.
Many of the largest projects have worked together behind the scenes on compatibility.
It's not that common now that ActivityPub has matured, but you better believe the early days of 2018 had big players like Mastodon and Pleroma working closely on compat.
#ActivityPub = Community + Collaboration
The magic formula that sets us apart!
Today's question for a resilient #Fediverse is whether various different initiatives are willing to collaborate and cross-pollinate, while keeping their independence.
There's great opportunity to increase the cohesion of the #GrassrootsFedi#ActivityPub developer community and creating strong joins:
I'm very glad to announce the release of version 2.27 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C. It includes some interesting new features (that I announced some days ago):
Started Mastodon API support, so you can use Mastodon-compatible apps to access #snac accounts. What works so far: login, private and public timelines, full post information (replies and ancestors), liking and boosting posts. Things that don't work yet but eventually will: following accounts, posting and replying to messages (I still have to figure out how some things work, like posting images), notifications (needs some internal support), the instance timeline (snac does not have one, but it can be simulated with not much effort) and probably many other things. Things that will never work: bookmarks, pinning, a federated timeline, many other things that I don't remember right now. Please note that if you want to use this API in your instance, you must add some lines to your HTTP proxy configuration, see the snac(8) (administrator documentation) manual page. I'm doing my tests using the #Tusky (which sometimes crashes, surely my fault), #AndStatus, #Fedilab and #Husky Android apps. Success or failure reports will be appreciated.
Fixed some buffer overflows (contributed by Saagar Jha).
Call me crazy, but I've started implementing the #MastodonAPI into #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C that everybody loves. When it's ready, you will be able to operate your snac account from a Mastodon-compatible app like #Tusky and the like.
I hope to have it working read-only in a couple of days, but who knows.
Lots of news items this week. The major milestone is the 1 billion posts across the entire fediverse per month! Lots of new interesting tools as well, it won’t be long before that will turn into an entirely separate post each week.
I’m also fascinated by the speed with which PixelFed is developing. So far, Mastodon has been the centre piece of the fediverse, it’s where all the app development goes, and what everyone talks about. But PixelFed is quickly becoming a big contender as well. The release of Stories will certainly contribute to that. There is a new third party iOS app, Vernissage, and a new easy friend-finding tool. Curious to see how this will develop.
FindMyFriends is a new tool to find your Mastodon friends on PixelFed.
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber did a poll on iPhone case usage on both Twitter and Mastodon. Even though his Twitter account has almost 10 times the amount of followers, the poll on Mastodon got more engagement in absolute terms.
Twitter alternative Post.News confirms that they are still planning to support ActivityPub, even though it will not be in 2023. News here, commentary here.
Mastometrics, an analytics tool for your personal data, has an update to easily see the people who you interact with the most.
FediMeister is a new Mastodon desktop client for all operating systems with a focus on content creators. It can automatically break up large bodies of text into threads, supports the scheduling of posts as well as hashtag research. Hashtag research gives you an overview on which days which hashtags are used the most.
Hyperspace, a desktop app for most operating systems, is winding down. In a blog post, the creator reflects: “Apps like Elk, Ice Cubes, and Ivory are providing great user experiences that would feel like a dream to have back in 2019.” (h/t @liaizon )
A fascinating thread on the transition from Twitter to Mastodon for Ethiopian journalists.
Verifiedjournalist.org, a directory of journalists on the fediverse, now allows for full keyword search of accounts who have signed up and verified with the service.
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Hi, everyone. I've just released version 2.26 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C. This is a low profile maintenance version that includes just the following minor changes:
The OpenSSL code has been refactored to avoid using deprecated functions.
Added more aggressive filtering on unwanted Announce (boost) messages.
👋 Are there any #activitypub engineers out there who’d be down to chat with me (a federated eng newbie) about best practices for setting up a lightweight federated server to achieve this new StreetPass UI (see prev posts in thread)? #mastodev
Can ActivityPub save the internet? (www.theverge.com)