submitted 1 week ago by trwnh@mastodon.social to c/fediverse@fedia.io

96 comments fedilink hide all child comments

idk where to really put this (might turn into a blog post later or something). it's what you might call a "hot take", certainly a heterodox one to some parts of the broader #fediverse community. this is in response to recent discussion on "what do you want to see from AP/AS2 specs" (in context of wg rechartering) mostly devolving into people complaining about JSON-LD and extensibility, some even about namespacing in general (there was a suggestion to use UUID vocab terms. i'm not joking)

1/?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] trwnh@mastodon.social 1 points 1 week ago

when #ActivityPub was being standardized alongside AS2 it basically had two compelling reasons for what would become the #fediverse to adopt it:

it was built on AS2, which was an evolution of AS1, which was already being used. so it wasn't hard to make the jump.
it made followers-only posts possible, because while atom feeds could do this, it was wildly inconvenient to actually do it that way. posting something private to an inbox is a lot simpler, no juggling access control tokens.

6/?

[-] trwnh@mastodon.social 1 points 1 week ago

but beyond that, what does #ActivityPub actually do for #fediverse as a "network" "protocol"? basically nothing. you have a basic mechanism for delivering activities directly to subscribers, but no specified shape or structure for that payload. and you still need a lot of other specs to end up with something that talks to the "network". even with AS2 vocab, you need more vocab extensions to express things you want to.

simply put, AP is not enough for a "protocol" to build a "network".

7/?

[-] trwnh@mastodon.social 1 points 1 week ago

but before you build a "protocol" for a "network", consider: what even is a "network", in this context? and, here's the hot take: do you even want that kind of "network"? do you want a separate reified #fediverse network?

because the answer that #ActivityPub gives is actually a different one. There is no "AP network", because AP as a protocol is not enough to build a concrete network. it is intended to provide, and exists in context of, the larger #Web.

8/?

[-] trwnh@mastodon.social 1 points 1 week ago

this is the fundamental divide between #fediverse thinking and #Web thinking, where #ActivityPub straddles the line between both.

i've seen it said that the "open-world assumption" at the foundation of the Web is actually an undesirable thing for a "social networking protocol", and as a consequence, specs built on that open-world assumption are "completely unsuitable" for that "protocol".

but do we need a "social networking protocol"? do we even need "social networks" in the first place?

9/?

[-] MichaelTBacon@social.coop 1 points 1 week ago

@trwnh@mastodon.social

https://social.coop/@MichaelTBacon/110634358031380559

Non-corporate/non-VC social media really needs to stop hating on "walled gardens" and start thinking about how you mind the gate that lets you into the garden and who gets in and who gets out.

If this exclusion still seems bad, start with "fascists" and then work outward from there.

News from fediverse