With respect to #ActivityPub

Jenniferplusplus

@hrefna Yes. Exactly this. I would personally suggest that the best target to aim for, in compatibility terms, is "possible to develop incrementally, and relatively easy to extend from existing AP logic"

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

@lily @jenniferplusplus @puppygirlhornypost2 @hrefna

I agree. We must build on AP, not throw it away. The model that makes sense to me is “strict” mode. I know LitePub tried this, but I don’t know why it failed. Perhaps that’s a starting point for making a successful change.

/etc/init.d/witch.navi

@hrefna @smallcircles

i do want to (try) to start a wayland-protocols-like process for FEPs

extensions requires ACKs from current implementation maintainer, and 2 actual real world implementations

lily

@benpate @puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus @hrefna what is strict mode?

1A

@hrefna given how [w3c accepts drm money](https://www.defectivebydesign.org/w3c), i don't know much about the prospects of fediverse under w3c control

Helge

With a vision to move past AP and a willingness to break compatibility

I think alone clearly stating what this vision is, and formulating acceptance criteria for it, would be of immense help.

My personal acceptance criteria (of a social networking protocol) is: When building a recipe sharing app, a developer has to worry more about converting three tea spoons of salts into sensible units, than what the exact data structure that represents a message is, or how other applications display the recipe (if they even do).

Noah Kennedy

@hrefna i wonder if the ietf might be a better forum for this

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@helge @hrefna

This!

Hrefna (DHC)

@noah ATProto thinks so. Last I checked that’s where they wanted to standardize

Noah Kennedy

@hrefna yeah, for a protocol like ap or atproto, the ietf is probably as well-setup as you're going to get

Laurens Hof

@lily @puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus @hrefna @benpate

Think its worth looking at the PDSes from ATProto here. Adverse Interoperability is a thing, and the Bluesky people are actually not that adverse at all currently to experiments. If you're looking to extend a protocol because of the value of the userbase, atproto might be just as logical of a choice.

thinking in this direction https://berjon.com/ap-at/, but instead of AP its a modified version of AP

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@benpate @lily @jenniferplusplus @puppygirlhornypost2
@hrefna

> We must build on AP

That is but one of many options and variations that circulate. There's quite a few people pondering some kind vNext social protocol, but whether there is any alignment for a collective effort should first be investigated. What do we want of this protocol? Until then there cannot be MUSTs.

@helge put it well in https://mymath.rocks/objects/8ba68883-a0f7-4ee2-874e-27dc9eb514bd in that the DX should shield from all these technical layers.

smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@iacore @hrefna

This is specifically addressed by considering the Fediverse to be part of a bottom up 3-stage standardization of which also the FEP is part, among others. Here there's no such thing as "control" but things bubble up to W3C from a decentralized ecosystem. See:

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)

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

@smallcircles @lily @jenniferplusplus @puppygirlhornypost2 @hrefna @helge

Yeah, maybe "must" is too strong. I just don't see a viable way forward if we just throw *everything* away.

But what *could* we do to make development easier? I'd start with:

- a strict schema for objects and activities that defines what is a string, what's an object, and what's an array

- something better than HTTP sigs OMG

- real use cases for user-level interop, like FEP-3b86

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

@lily @puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus @hrefna

"Strict" mode isn't a real thing -- it's just a fantasy of mine where we have actual definitions of what objects/properties are and how they're used.

Imagine something like "use strict" in Javascript applied to ActivityPub. (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Strict_mode)

In the ActivityPub world, it would have saved me 80% of the code I wrote to get Emissary to Federate.

lily

@laurenshof @puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus @hrefna @benpate my issue with atproto is that its vision is incompatible with how the fediverse operates
the fediverse forms a lot of natural circles based on how things federate while on atproto you see everything from everywhere which is not even a bad thing in itself, but combined with the main audience of bluesky (because that's the only noteworthy atproto implementation atm) (mostly ex-twitter users, where the culture is completely different and focused on numbers instead of interaction), it makes me feel alienated. it's that feeling that i'm interacting with people but there is no connection made

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

@lily @puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus @hrefna

RIP LitePub: https://litepub.social

I think something like this is the most realistic way to simplify ActivityPub development, so it would be invaluable to understand why LitePub is now a ghost town.

If any of the elders here know the story of what happened there, this'd be a story worth telling.

Call it ActivityPub 2.1. It could start with some simple refactors to make all of our outbound messages rational and self-authenticating.

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

@lily @laurenshof @puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus @hrefna

I don’t know if that’s because of the AT protocol or the community/culture of ex-Twitter users.

Same with Nostr (an interesting technical idea) vs. the Nostr community of crypto-bros and “don’t tread on me” / “free speech absolutists”

lily

@benpate @puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus @hrefna @laurenshof i think it's both. when you see literally everything that's being talked about, that's so much stuff to be constantly paying attention to, and it gets hard to build meaningful connections

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

@lily @puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus @hrefna @laurenshof yeah, I see that too. I also have a lot of trouble with updates on Macedon. For example, even in this thread, it’s hard to always know what’s happening in the conversation.

I blame that on the clients, and lazy UX design, and not ActivityPub itself. But who knows? The protocol could easily be skewing things in One Direction or another.