Explaining the fediverse is a hard problem.
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I had the opportunity to work with the team at OpenBeta on the re-launching of their community forums. They're one of our earliest v4 testers, since they've agreed to have ActivityPub enabled!
(Okay, more realistically I dragged them into it kicking and screaming, but they did provide the opportunity for the forum relaunch, so I'm taking the opportunities as they come!)
During the prep, I discussed some of the well-trodden concept of the fediverse to my co-admin, Ben (@[email protected] and also @[email protected])... stuff I'm sure you've come across:
- Fragmented nature of conversations
- The idea of an instance
- Content discovery with respect to the follow-relationship model
... and wouldn't you know it, it's really hard to discuss these ideas, and Ben is actually fairly well-versed! He ran his own Iceshrimp instance, so all of this wasn't exactly new to him.
Part of it was that I had been steeped in the ActivityPub dev scene for almost a year, so it's hard to step back and explain to
mere mortalslaymennon-developers what exactly all this ActivityPub nonsense is.All I know it gets me thinking that I need to work with @[email protected] on documentation!
That new NodeBB instance, by the way, is https://community.openbeta.io
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I like explaining it via analogy to email, since it's something even laypeople are familiar with. I mean email is federated in a sense as well, or at least it uses an open standard.
People are used to the idea that one email might be at domainone.com while another email is at domaintwo.com, but these emails can still talk to one another. Just imagine that, but instead of email, it's social media actions like posting, commenting, liking stuff and such. I feel like that gets the general idea across pretty well. It doesn't explain a lot of the edge cases though.
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@julian
Documentation is absolutely an essential part of it, but I think it might be worth stepping back a bit more and acknowledging that "needs more documentation" is still a techie response to this challenge.
What the Fediverse needs is a good PR person lol. It needs communication, not documentation. Communication is relating ideas to laymen and showing them why Fedi is exciting for them, not just why it's technically cool or how it works.
One of the central concepts to the Fediverse is the abstraction between content and presentation. That's really what it's all about: my instance is responsible for presentation, but the content can be viewed anywhere. And the problem is that people don't get how a Facebook post could be a Tweet. And even if they can get that, it's more confusing how a Reddit post could be an Instagram post.
For this to work and to at least get users onboard in the first place -- and I think NodeBB does a great job of this overall -- Fedi platforms need to be transparent to users. NodeBB needs to just work as a forum for forum users, and any topics posted there need to just work as a post for Mastodon users, just work as a topic for Lemmy users, etc. -
julian:
All I know it gets me thinking that I need to work with @[email protected] on documentation!
Please tag me/msg me if you want a reviewer of a draft! I have been working a little on "normal-human"-facing docs this month, so it's not entirely selfless of me to offer!
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[email protected]replied to Bean on last edited by [email protected]
And the problem is that people don't get how a Facebook post could be a Tweet. And even if they can get that, it's more confusing how a Reddit post could be an Instagram post.
The thing that gets me is how people don't grok this. It's still weird to me that so much of the Internet has become closed off. Growing up with email, forums, and IRC, it seems only natural that the internet is modular and portable.
And the kicker is, even people on the Fediverse have this centralized model for how it works in their mind. People behave as if everything lives in some central place, and that their chosen instance is just some kind of dumb terminal with a window. You can see it when people talk about blocking users or even other instances at the server level -- people react as if they're arbitrarily being denied access to some part of this central repository by some lording gatekeeper, rather than witnessing a website owner or community refusing to host content from actors they don't want to platform. -
[email protected]replied to [email protected] on last edited byKichae:
Growing up with email, forums, and IRC, it seems only natural...
Well yea, of course, if you grew up with decentralized social technology, then it seems natural to you. If you're reading this, you're probably in the top 1% of tech-literate people in the world (if not top 0.1%). Unfortunately, if you are reading this, you'll probably also have a hard time understanding the struggle of the remaining 99%, because you will have a hard time putting yourself in their shoes.
Reacting with astonishment about how people are not as tech-literate as you would hope is not a good path for understanding those people.
This is essentially the Curse of Knowledge. For good examples, look at some of the tag lines that appear on some fediverse app websites:
- Lemmy: "A link aggregator for the fediverse"
- Misskey: "Interplanetary microblogging platform.Misskey is an open source, decentralized social media platform that's free forever!"
- Mbin: "A federated content aggregator, voting, discussion and microblogging platform."
Normal people (the 99%) do not know any of these words:
- Link/content aggregator?
- "Fediverse"?
- Microblogging?
- Open source?
- Decentralized?
- Federated?
(I'm not especially bashing Lemmy, Misskey or Mbin here, it was just some examples I found; no offense meant, this is a hard problem, lots of fediverse apps do this)
It's no surprise that the fediverse is mostly dominated by technical people, because generally the fediverse platforms do not do an amazing job at introducing and teaching people the concept of the fediverse. You will not get a "normal person" (non-techie person) to sign up on a site that starts out with several technical terms that they don't understand.
The approach taken by Mastodon's intro site is much more friendly to newcomers and I wish more apps would do the same. Pixelfed is also close though it still mentions "Open source and decentralized".
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[email protected]replied to [email protected] on last edited by
Opened a PR on fediverse.party to start incrementally improving the various "landing pages" of the Fediverse... feel free to pile on if you have input! I'll open other PRs on the explainer copy as well tomorrow.
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Finally the topic Iāve been waiting for.
Honestly.
Tbh. I have zoned out because of this and other non node related things.
I havenāt had time to distill APub and often refer back to my own past concepts that seemed to resemble activitypub to get my noodle around it.
So while I kinda get it I havenāt actually gotten into it.
Discourse has had it for sometime too but APub is disorientating, bottom line itās like where do I start and why do I even start. What it where is the problem it has solved?(As a user or site admin/owner)
If you canāt explain it in 20/30 words it will never gain mass appeal or adoption, if you canāt value it it will remain invisible.
Even the responses (good contributions) but to my problem still canāt encapsulate it enough to simply answer the question, simply.
I had in early reaction to nascent implantation suggested some UI changes to help with my own gut reaction the interplay on community, but as time goes on I found the activity of activity pub really staring and amplify harmonies weak points to make slimming post less appealing and of course life and the times we live in too getting in the way - Ah yea life that world outside but also the inner life too, perhaps the greater undiscovered country.
So let me see. How can it or what can Activity pub nested in NodeBB do to enable or enhance that journey?
Or are you actually (is NodeBB) on the right journey?
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Itās the word āfederatedā, that has always gotten me.
Federation yes, but in common parlance I donāt think Iād ever come across the word federated, and so it lacks an immediate referential model, it simply doesnāt click.
Whereas take email as the analogy to my federated word problem.
Everyone knew what mail was, this new one was simply electronic on or in the computer! Kinda magic. No paper. Beautiful. Wow attachments. Amazing. Solves so many material burdens. Awesome.
Very easy to get conceptually, i.e. instant!
Ugh but FEDERATED!
Wtaf is federated. See/search the definition.
It a medley of things about governments organisation etc. etc. most people donāt rightly know how their own govs truly work and most probably perceive it doesnāt work they know its probably big and bloated really wasteful full of unnecessary complexities. Sucks up your life via tax blah blah blahā¦
ā¦but email, ah email what an incredible innovation, even granny/grandma gets it!
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I do agree that the term "federation" and the use of the verb "to federate" (with its even weirder bastard cousin "defederate", which is not even a real word) is very unfortunate. It would be great to have a shorter and more fitting term. Something normal people would connect with more easily.
I find it especially problematic because its a word that translates poorly, at least in Danish. The Danish word for "federation" can also be used to mean an organization or association, which leads to further confusion. And the verbs for "to federate" and "to defederate" are also just... awkward and really just translate to "connect" and "stop connection" or something. It's not great.
Not that I have any alternatives to suggest honestly. And let's be real, even if I did, that ship has sailed, unless we can rally a big rebranding effort for the fediverse. Such a thing does not sound easy.
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Omega,
- the ActivutyPub functionality is optional, so for those not interested its no issue, but looking into the future, developing it now seems 'on the right track'.
- your linguistic comment on federated vs federation, surely its just the past tense?
To use your email example, 'a document has been emailed', is legitimate language, and similar to the reflexive past phrase 'a site has been federated'?
A link has been linked, a download was downloaded etc
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Hey, In reverse I do the replying
- There was no cognitive model for the word "federated" in my head. Nothing happens when I read it. Federation. Federal. No problem here.
I genuinely never encountered the "past tense" of the word until Activity Pub hit the scene and nothing happens, no connection. If I am the dull. So be it. You know. This is really the marketing point or the communication point.
Guess what, federated still doesn't click, it is a mental block, I haven't gotten to the bit where I have the physical analogue for federated. Say for example after we get over the amazeballs of email, then we come across the CC or BCC, wow a mass mail out, basically wow that's cool, oh what there is junk mail too? All these existing real world analoges perfect communicated in a few words or just word, the matching precedence and experience.
Federated. None. The email is example is used, I had to read it twice, I got ti the second time, but the engine still don't start. No fire lit. We're talking the light bulb moment 9and this is very different to the multitude of technical lightbulbs the tec/dev will encounter, the end user in the main, will not care to know as they will never have time to know, that's mass market)
- I'm just vining off the idea, how to explain it not the technical choices. However, we do live with it on community in the raw state, so there is that and I have reposeded to that. I suggested a filter or two types of modes iirc, I'll have to dig out that topic. Sunglasses or no sunglasses browsing.
What I need to do is set up activity pub technically on something somewhere to enjoy the whole, to take the next step whenever that happens.
I dunno yet if Activitypub is "wouldn't' it be cool if..." or "how did we do x to get to y before we had z, I'll never know!", the later is pending the former not unusual to be consigned to the due heap of thing time forgot.
Additionally, there are now people who have completed grown up in a dn live live to much in cyberspace and cyberspace is actually retarding real space IMHO, the problems of cyberspace do not necessarily solve the problem of living space as much as they use to (mail > email). I think we're at a point where the things we engage and do are consuming more than it is now returning, and Ai is a clear milestone on that front.
Broad points, but here is the challenge, explain Acitivyt Pub in 20 maybe 30 words, within or not a NodeBB context, or both.
How about that as a challenge?
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Sans researching this more, how about this:
In a field I shout @person who I know is in another field. I can not see them as they are far away, but they hear me and can reply and I hear them, in a world of separated fields distance is zero using @[email protected] under activity pub
Does this work? I can't tell... you tell me.
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@[email protected] said in Explaining the fediverse is a hard problem.:
<p><span><a href="/user/bean%40uvix.cc">@<span>bean</span></a></span><span> </span><span><a href="https://community.nodebb.org/user/julian">@<span>julian</span></a></span><span> </span></p><blockquote><span>And the problem is that people don't get how a Facebook post could be a Tweet. And even if they can get that, it's more confusing how a Reddit post could be an Instagram post. </span></blockquote><span>The thing that gets me is how people don't grok this. It's still weird to me that so much of the Internet has become closed off. Growing up with email, forums, and IRC, it seems only natural that the internet is modular and portable.<br /><br />And the kicker is, even people on the Fediverse have this centralized model for how it works in their mind. People behave as if everything lives in some central place, and that their chosen instance is just some kind of dumb terminal with a window. You can see it when people talk about blocking users or even other instances at the server level -- people react as if they're arbitrarily being denied access to some part of this central repository by some lording gatekeeper, rather than witnessing a website owner or community refusing to host content from actors they don't want to platform.</span><p></p>
I think the only problem here is you assume people should be able to "grok" it. Most people didn't actually grow up in those other "fields", forums IRC etc. etc.
In fact tech has moved on so much that people need to think zero about how things work they just work - magic, you can thank Apple or not for that approach but they understand their users bases and all segments and when you want to cast the widest net you need everyone to be able to use your product without a bad experience - this is where the tech has simply evolved into an appliance to the user, like a microwave, not hard to use, easy to understand without having a clue about magnetrons or the birth of radar, but we can tell each other the anecdote about the scientist whose mars bar melting in his pocket was the inspiration for the microwave to use it to hear food (even if that that story is true or a modern myth) it doesn't matter, we all stand back a few feet from the brrrrr'ing microwaves until the dish is done! Just in case, so often more than not, we understand how the tech works better through the danger of it than anything else!
So really, I think it is perfectly normal for people not to get this. If we orientate around this truth then you can solve the problem you perceive.
The clue is in the title of the OP
@baris @julian a gentle FYA note on the nested quote not happening.
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@[email protected] said in Explaining the fediverse is a hard problem.:
And the problem is that people don't get how a Facebook post could be a Tweet. And even if they can get that, it's more confusing how a Reddit post could be an Instagram post.
This is a good observation and anecdote, but do they have to get it?
They only have to get it if they want it, if they want to do it.
Why would they want to do this?
Perhaps you are encountering an unarticulated confusion they are experiencing as you try to explain it. In their mind they are thinking, but sure wy would i need this, I have insta, all my buds are there.
Habits are powerful and once people are locked into a platform they are sticky, they leave they are usually gone for good. It's all or nothing most of the time.
Early adoption is invariably more miss than hit and is not the preserve of the masses.
I cite Apple again, they learned this, they wait till things mature and there is a decent enough desire. Their latest headset is a good example. They might be pushing their wait envelope on this but they did wait. Whereas others were out of the gates years before, in fact the idea has been around for decades.
VR is one of the harder sells, and ActivityPub may be the VR of online content creation.
Does the ordinary person even think of themselves as a "content creator" they really don't, they think of themselves as themselves (if posting under their real name or at least photo, and then even as a non they still are themselves most of the time) That's the majority of people. They want to express as is there want in the moment, they get the likes and insights, feedback or whatever and they feel a positive feedback or some worth and value to their actions - is amplifying that across disparate platforms something they really need?
If they do not need it, then they do not need to get it.
... enter stage left MARKETING!
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I accept your challenge to explain the utility in 20 words. Ironic challenge as your posts are lengthy literary masterpieces
So under 20 words with practical example
I already use Mastodon as apposed to Twitter so Im onboard. @[email protected]
