For those who didn't know (or have forgotten), there's a PeerTube channel here with videos of the talks and Q&A sessions from the #ActivityPub conference we had in late 2020: https://conf.tube/c/apconf_channel/videos
Picking through these videos is a great way to get a sense of where some of us wanted fediverse development to go, both technically and politically.
With pandemic-related things calming down a bit, and especially with the surge in fediverse use over the last 6 months, it seems like a good time to regroup. Would anyone be interested in attending an online fediverse conference, or helping to organise one?
I agree account portability even if the original instance shuts down suddenly is critically important.
I definitely don't agree this would be hard to create on ActivityPub. It needs <some trusted place> to be your account backup in case it's needed. And yes, that trusted place could be self hosted for those that don't trust.
(Currently the main Mastodon codebase would need some, but not extensive, additions to be able to recreate a posting history. Replacing origin addresses in a database isn't data intensive though)
@troed
> I agree account portability even if the original instance shuts down suddenly is critically important
Absolutely.
> I definitely don't agree this would be hard to create on ActivityPub
This is contrary to everything I've read on the subject. Would you be willing to explain your implementation ideas on SocialHub? Https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/
Poked my head into Mastodon quickly, still people ranting about Bluesky.
Again: if you want to make Mastodon more welcome to people and have everyone here, it needs to get easier to use and add features people need (working replies, working search, quote posts, better discoverability of interesting posts).
@thomasfuchs
> if you want to make Mastodon more welcome to people
At the risk of being a broken record, this is like telling people in 1999 that if they want more people using the web, they have to improve Internet Exploiter. There are alternatives to using Mastodon to access the fediverse:
So, #Bluesky is all the hype now and a lot of #Mastodon people are falling for the olde "invite link" trick which not only paints, what is ultimately going to be another social media shitshow, as an exclusive club, but also sneakily turns everyone's curiosity into a vessel for word-of-mouth advertisement to ride piggy back on.
Well, maybe the AT Protocol is at least better than #ActivityPub. So, since it is on #Github [1] , let's have a quick look and ... Aww shit! Thread time..
@raccoon
Noob questions; is there an ActivityPub implementation that doesn't use JS? Are all the ones, that do (including Mastodon) subject to the security vulnerability you lay out here?
@Susan_Larson_TN
"In its latest update, Bluesky has added Thread Muting, so that you can mute notifications of conversations in which you have been mentioned. A few days ago, Bluesky was updated with content moderation for the first time. Users can now report a post as spam, hate content, copyright infringement, or illegal."
The #ActivityPub standards that’s behind #Mastodon has no notion of #cw content warnings. Mastodon decided to use the subject field for that. Not saying it’s right or wrong, but this decision makes interoperability a problem.
Full stop, I hate how disabled people are ripped off for things that are essential like mobility devices, communication devices, adapted recreational items. Why should we have to pay thousands to have legs or talk, like any other Abled person can do for free. There needs to be programs in place to make sure these items are low cost and/or FREE.
@blkgoddess
> There needs to be programs in place to make sure these items are low cost and/or FREE
Totally agree. Most countries have this and it's called a public health system. We look at the ridiculous, inefficient illness-industrial complex the US calls its "health system" with mounting horror.
#ActivityPub question I’ve not yet seen discussed:
What happens if server admin wants to move from, say, #Mastodon to #Calckey? Is there a way to do that without essentially nuking all user accounts and starting over? How deep does the ability to migrate go, or should it go?
@mjx
> How deep does the ability to migrate go, or should it go?
Not very deep. Account portability is one of the reasons BlueSky give for creating AT Protocol. If accounts were fully portable between any two fediverse instances, using methods specified in future versions of the Activity protocol (or in FEPs that extend it), it would be possible to set up the new instance and give users of the old one a one-click way to migrate to the new one. They would also have the option to go elsewhere.
I've been hearing a lot of (mostly negative) rumblings about #BlueSky and I've been trying to find out what all the noise is about.
What I'm struggling to understand is why they felt the need to reinvent the wheel by creating the #AT protocol. What does it supposedly do that #ActivityPub does not?
I don't really see a way to see this as anything other than an attempt to be deliberately incompatible for some reason.
Most of what I've been able to find online is either from tech media which glosses over all the relevant technical details, or from BlueSky's official statements which don't seem to answer it either.