I woke up to a lot of drama in the fediverse concerning the future of ActivityPub and how it compares to AT Protocol.

Scott M. Stolz

I woke up to a lot of drama in the fediverse concerning the future of ActivityPub and how it compares to AT Protocol. Reading what others had to say, some of it got a bit heated.

I think the biggest problem that ActivityPub faces is that the more popular platforms are not interested in implementing new features. So you have this situation where smaller platforms are trying to innovate in ActivityPub, but the larger platforms won't recognize any of those innovations.

For example, Mitra and a new project called Forte are collaborating on nomadic identity over ActivityPub. Once it is stable, it will probably be ported over to Hubzilla. Out of hundreds of projects, only three would support nomadic identity.

Scott's Code Journal

ActivityPub's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness.

silverpill

@scott Nomadic identity over AP needs to mature first. Once the specs stabilize, I think more projects will be interested in implementing it.

We also need to write explainers and guides for developers. I can tell from discussions with other developers that FEP-ef61 is difficult to understand

Tejan Ausland

Over time, that does give new platforms an advantage though. If the older platforms refuse to adopt new innovations, the new platforms will become more attractive and gain users.

Jupiter Rowland

@Tejan Ausland Both Hubzilla and (streams) blow Mastodon and Threads clean out of the water without even breaking a sweat. They always have.

Why didn't people leave Mastodon and pile onto them by at least hundreds of thousands then? Not simply because they're too complex. Not so much because public (streams) instances are impossible to find either.

No, it's because most Twitter escapees and Mastodon users simply don't know they exist. At least half of them only know Mastodon and nothing else, they literally believe the Fediverse == Mastodon.

And when they do happen to learn about Hubzilla or (streams), they're so at home on Mastodon that they don't want to move again. Besides, many of them take Mastodon for the Fediverse gold standard and everything that deviates from Mastodon for broken. Lastly, there is no "move from Mastodon to Hubzilla" or "move from Mastodon to (streams)" automation functionality.

Scott M. Stolz

@Jupiter Rowland Hubzilla's issue has always been the UI and lack of documentation. When we fix that, I think Hubzilla will take off as long as we promote it more.