Mike McCue
The network effect for #ActivityPub is gaining some serious momentum right now. As more services adopt the protocol, more people, more communities and more content are added to the network making it increasingly more valuable for everyone. This will only accelerate in the coming months as Threads, Wordpress, Tumblr, Flipboard and others federate. We're still in early innings but there's no way to put this genie back in the bottle. The open social Web / the #Fediverse is going to be huge. 43 comments
Bart Decrem :mammoth_gold:
@mike stoked. 2024 is going to be for open social what 2004 was for the open web --when we launched Firefox 1.0
Mike McCue
@coldfish Great point! I don't think there's anything preventing this from happening. Just a matter of an engineer building it now. 
Dan Morris
I tried to get my client at https://accessibilityonline.org/ao/ to set up an instance instead of using twitter and facebook, but they didn't seem to understand. I tried to explain that their specialty is Accessibility and mastodon is like designed for that. And how they could own the instance entirely and use it for their chats and commentary, etc... but... deaf ears. I'm sure they will at some point. 
Chris Sansbury
@mike Hopefully the widespread instance blocking doesn't close off the open social web before it has a chance to take off.  
Shoq
@naught101 @mike I wouldn’t expect them too, but the more tools we have outside of them, the more value propositions we bring to users, imo,
Canoel K.
@mike As it turns out, the cryptobros were right, Web 3.0 is coming and it's going to be decentralized. But unlike they imagined, it won't be based on some obscure blockchain, but rather on actual solutions like the ActivityPub protocol. Lets just hope that we don't turn out to be lunatics just like them. 
Brian Swetland
@mike I'm hopeful. I miss the protocols-not-apps, bring-your-own-client / use-one-client-to-talk-to-N-services Internet of the 90s and think there's a massive amount of value there. It'd be nice to head back in that direction a bit. 
Mike McCue
@controlfreak I think you're raising a good point here if I understand you correctly. Specifically: how will smaller instances handle federating with larger instances as the fediverse grows? This is worth a lot of effort to figure out because we don't want the fediverse to become just a collection of a few really big instances. Smaller instances provide more choice for users broadly and will be inherently better at serving users locally. I think how relaying works will play a key role here.
Rober
@mike @controlfreak That will not be a problem. With the current model instances do not federate all the content from other instances, but only the accounts that are followed. It doesn't matter the size of federated instances, only the amount of people on your instance an the amount of accounts followed on remote instances. 
Kudra :maybe_verified:
@Roboron @mike @controlfreak I was hoping someone would point this out. As an instance's number of users grows it does bring in more content from other instances, but it's not *all* the content from each instance. However, if you have users who become viral on a bigger instance, that could be a really big problem, if I understand correctly, that can already be an issue for small instances with celebrities.
Mike McCue
@kudra @Roboron @controlfreak Yes, I think that's correct at the moment. I think there could be ways to setup relays such that bigger instances shouldered more of the burden/cost so that smaller instances didn't have to. Up to now this hasn't been a huge issue but as the number of people with accounts in the Fediverse scales (I think at least 10X growth in 2024 is likely) this will become an important problem to solve in a way that strengthens smaller instances rather than weakening them.
mirqmarq428
> implying that threads and tumblr will actually bother federating when they already got the publicity from it
Mike McCue
@mitchmarq42xyz Based on what I can see, I think it's pretty clear that both Threads and Tumblr are serious about federating. It may happen in stages because it's a lot of work to federate an existing service in a useful way that makes sense for both the service's existing users as well as for users in the Fediverse. 
Mark Saltveit
@mike
Mike McCue
@taoish A well placed concern. They can do that without federating. Google has already indexed the entirety of the fediverse.
Ian Campbell
@mike I wish you were right, but experience shows me that capitalism will surely find a way to fuck all of this up. Fediverse will peak and then onto the Next Big Thing
Ian Campbell
@mike That's what John Connor said Skynet... Enshittification is inevitable. Man, I sound so jaded.
Elena Rossini ✨🎥
@mike exciting times! Particularly thrilled by the prospect of being able to “take my followers” with me in case I ever decide to migrate instances… I’m still traumatized over the demise of the bird site and the fact it’s “holding hostage” my followers and posts now that I no longer use it (14+ years of activity gone up in smoke) 💨
Mike McCue
@_elena Yes. All the work that people put into making connections with people should belong to them, not a company.
Kaj Kandler
@mike Question: What is the difference/innovation of Activity Pub over RSS for a blog/CMS like Wordpress?
Mike McCue
@kajkandler This is a really good question because ActivityPub is similar to RSS with two really important differences. 1) ActivityPub is two way. While RSS broadcasts content it does not have a way to know if someone liked, boosted or commented on that content. 2) RSS forms a connection between a blog and an RSS app. ActivityPub forms a follow connection between an account and another account. This means if you move from one reader app to another the connection is maintained.
Kaj Kandler
@mike Question: If corporations implement Activity Pub, does that mean they are providing “Algorithms" to filter the home feed according to user signals (and their advertisers “legitimate" interests)?
Mike McCue
@kajkandler ActivityPub implementations are independent from whether algorithms are used or not. And anyone can implement ActivityPub however they choose.
Kaj Kandler
@mike Thanks for the reply. You seem to know a lot about the protocol. May I ask who is responsible for the home feed? Is it the server I host my account with or the client app that I use? I ask, because I would not mind to have a machine learning algorithm filter some sources in my feed for the topics I'm interested in and engage with. While other sources I'd like to have raw, 100%. 
Albert Cardona
Sounds good, but what's the plan for handling the fallout of Meta slurping in the whole social graph of Mastodon and using it for their own nefarious purposes? 
Petra van Cronenburg
@mike @albertcardona Some instances already started defederation: https://fedipact.online/ (and everybody can block Threads personally, too).
Mike McCue
@NatureMC @albertcardona On one hand, that's the beauty of the #fediverse. People are free to federate or de-federate based on what they value and the kind of communities they want to participate in. I would just caution that automatically walling entire groups of people off from each other out of fear could be self defeating for the Fediverse. There are many tools that can be used to prevent bad actors and bad behavior when it's seen. And more can be built to effectively federate moderation.
scribandotcom
@mike @NatureMC @albertcardona The irony here is that rando Mastodon instances (or really anything that supports AP) actually pose a much bigger problem for Meta via Threads than the reverse. 
misfit loser zealot patatas
@mike Sure looks to me like the battlefield tactics of a ruthless monopolistic megacorporation, but who knows, maybe they're nice and cuddly and good people actually? |
Gregory's Server
@mike So exciting!!