Gregory's Server
#### takahē - A new Fediverse paradigm
#### 19 January 2023
Fresh out of the oven is #Takahē, introducing a very interesting basic functional motive for development and delivering a beautiful #UX. It also derives inspiration in the form of its #mascott from a species once thought extinct for about a century.
That is, until a single man obsessed with the saga of this large, flightness bird since his early childhood, endlessly sought out and eventually rediscovered it was actually extant 75 years ago through his tireless efforts.
In recent years, and not without some particularly problematic attempts in the management of this #endangered_species, the population of these magnificent birds has more or less stabilized at around 100 members living in the wild, thanks to the committed efforts of a government sponsored #refoliation, hatching, and rearing program; in conjunction with a comprehensive scientific tagging, tracking, and monitoring effort of those members released into the wild alongside the wild-born members of the #population.
The software project itself has struck me as rather special too, and not just for its two functionally unique characteristics amongst other #Fediverse platforms - first, and similar to name based #SSL hosting on #HTTP servers with #SNI, Takahē provides multi-domain virtual hosting capabilities to #ActivityPub - this is huge, and opens the door for for even the casusl home self-hoster to provide #turnkey #SaaS offerings to their friends and family members in the form of small and #single_user "virtual Fediverse server instances", in consumer based home #LAN environments - let alone the potential for commercial hosting endeavors.
To my knowledge, this is the very first time this novel approach to Fediverse networking over ActivityPub has been broached.
If you hurry, you might still be able to secure for yourself an account in their limited beta program.
Go ahead, you can do that now, I'll still be here when you get back 😎
And as if that alone were not enough to revolutionize the paradigm and dynamic of the Fediverse, Takahē also introduces multiple account (alt) identities for each user user account on the server. This can only be described as freaking groundbreaking!
A single user account for a person might be the base for say, both @userone@SLD01.TLD01 AND @userone@SLD02 .TLD02 AND @usertwo@SLD02 .TLD02 - that, at least to me, can only be described as, "The Bees Knees".
I'm sure that many will cite, and of course it is not only possible but quite likely, that this will lower the bar for abusive actors to engage in shenanigans. However true as that may be, such potential (and existing practice) exists already within the Fediverse so the ease with which bad actors will avail themselves of such toolings only is only trivially simplified, not introduced; besides, complaining about such a thing is irrelevant - the cat is already out of the bag.
Indeed, there are already other Fediverse server platforms (such as the Hubzilla (ZOT) and Misskey families of forks and variants that already support the creation and management of multiple identities under a single account anyway - but Bringing the SNI shared hosting experience into production with a single Fediverse server instance is truly unprecedented in Fediverse space.
There's a lot more. Did I mention the beautiful, and exceedingly intuitive UI? Of course I did!
There's another corollary that I alluded to. Did you miss it? It was right there, before your eyes.
Yes, there's a metaphor, craftily scripted between the lines of everything you just read (that is, if you didn't tl;dr).
The impetus for much of #decentralization (DeSoc) and the #Genesis of the Fediverse is arguably the notion of what was indeed a #decentralized #World_Wide_Web over the fully decentralized #Internet, having falling victim to capture by special interests - the #deprecated, #proprietary, #privacy_disrespecting and #legacy #monolithic_silos - owned, spawned, and managed by mega surveillance-capitalism #data_mining corporations.... IOW, the so-called, Sunnyvale Syndrome.
This effectively killed of much of the notion that there even still existed an independant, #distributed_network of services and sites truly belonging to the #individual_participants, i.e., average #schmoes like you and me.
For sometime now, many have even claimed and argued that the kinder, friendlier #web of days gone by, where small #communities of #people and #websites belonging to #individuals and small businesses were actually #extinct in reality - with only those well heeled analytically correct, SEO optimized, #subjugated websites and #chattel in the form of people that had sworn #fealty to their lords and masters remaining. #Apple, #Amazon, the #Google and #Faceplant having long since taken #possession of their souls and #identities.
It's dark, so incredibly dark. And you have awakened to find yourself at the bottom of a well that you apparently have fallen into. There's plenty of water, you're knee deep in it, and a voice from above booms aloud that food will be delivered so long as, "It puts the lotion on its skin!"
And in a manner of speaking, following an "Internet century" (think, 'dog years') of a #dystopian #feudal Institution where Homo sapien drones existing in #Lords_and_Vassals lockstep, told what to think, how to believe, where to shit, and when to wake up and punch the time clock, had completely replaced the actually extinct human race... Well?...
Fast forwarding to the scene where...
Some awkward little child in a dimly candlelit bedroom, many children, truth be told, consumed with the dreams of, and empowered with an obsessive belief that, a world where real, unique and independently diverse human beings actually existed, grew up and many years later rediscovered that they really did still walk the earth.
Kinda like the true story of the Takahē. And we too, are beautiful.
I'm leaving the rest for you to discover for yourselves, and look forward to many discussions on this invigorating topic. In the meantime, you can follow:
I can be reached on Matrix at:
@tallship:matrix.org
via XMPP at:
tallship@jabber.org
and in the Fediverse at:@tallship@public.mitra.social
I hope that helps! Enjoy!
#tallship #FOSS #virtual_hosting #multiple_identity #DeSoc #Sunnyvale_Syndrome #AOL_Effect
⛵
.