Types of replies you can expect when talking about #ActivityPub:

Hrefna (DHC)

* No! Having standards will demean what is beautiful!

* Your proposal will enable mass abuse! (proposal is something like "maybe activities should be transient")

* But AP allows us all to talk together!

etc, etc etc.

Like… there's this continued disconnect between what people _think_ is AP and what is _actually in_ AP, but also there's this weird failure to parse what the concerns being brought up actually are.

3/3

#ActivityPub

Jon

@[email protected] yeah it's interesting. I get it when it comes from guys whose careers and/or egos are tied to AP -- it's unhelpful but understandable (although to be clear most of the people who created AP *don't* have this attitude). But it's so much broader. It makes no sense. IT'S JUST A PROTOCOL!!!!!!

And it's so self-defeating! How can it improve if we don't talk about and try to understand its weaknesses?

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@jdp23 @hrefna

I guess the thing is that AP is no longer a protocol, but so much more, same as "fediverse". Vague ethereal social phenomenon. They are terms that are in the eye of the beholder.

A mystical, mythical mist hanging over a meadow in the morning.. sometimes taking concrete tangible shapes, only to dissolve right away again.

Half-joking, this.

Jon

To be fair, AP is general enough that with the right vocabulary it could well be used to describe a mystical, mythical mist hanging over a meadow in the morning ...

Then again, it would probably just show up as a solid gray rectangangle on most implementations because of some decision Mastodon made about how to handle Notes and articles back in 2017

@[email protected] @[email protected]

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@jdp23 @hrefna ha, yes. In many directions its a rainy day.

aroom

@smallcircles @jdp23 @hrefna the fediverse should be protocol agnostic

Jon

Yeah, the fediverse has always been multi-protocol. And yet, not everybody sees it that way. As I say in the section on "Why choose a narrow, gatekeeping, ahistorical ActivityPub-only definition of the Fediverse?" in https://privacy.thenexus.today/is-bluesky-part-of-todays-fediverse/ :

Oh well. If Evan and Eugen want to choose a definition of Fediverse where history stopped with Mastodon's 2017 adoption of ActivityPub, erases earlier Fediverse history, and ties the Fediverse's success to a protocol that has major issues and hasn't moved forward significantly since it was standardized in 2018, they can do that.

"The Fediverse" means different things to different people.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@jdp23 @hrefna @aroom

SocialHub itself did/does not bring a definition of the Fediverse, but has a focus on evolving AP. Currently it is only custodian of the FEP and favors a bottom-up grassroots process.

3-Stage Standards Process: Guaranteeing an open and decentralized ecosystem

Open ecosystem, open ecosystem, open ecosystem In various channels where the Standards Process is discussed there’s mention of a 2-stage structure that goes like: FEP → W3C. As I proposed many times before (like here, a…

SocialHub (socialhub.activitypub.rocks)

For a couple of years there was another hub called Feneas (Federated Network Association started by @jaywink) with a discourse forum who specifically saw Fediverse as multi-protocol and e.g. including of XMPP and Matrix besides ActivityPub.

Wayback MachineHamburger iconInternet Archive logoWeb iconTexts iconVideo iconAudio iconSoftware iconImages iconDonate iconEllipses iconDonate iconUser iconUpload iconSearch iconSearch iconSearch iconDonate icon

(web.archive.org)

unexpectedteapot

@jdp23 that was a good read. The part about Bluesky being useful as a counterweight for Threads and not being duped by typical Silicon Valley nonsense like most Fediverse influencers [and some developers], is well put. Thank you.

Jon

Glad you liked it, thanks very much for letting me know!

@[email protected]