💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › dimkr › 17258 captured on 2024-06-16 at 17:40:11. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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What is it that do don't like about ActivityPub? I can see reasons why a user wouldn't like Mastodon (its UI, its feature set, bugs that don't get fixed, etc') or an implementation of ActivityPub (because federation is unreliable, etc'). But what is it about the protocol itself that you don't like?
May 25 · 3 weeks ago
❄ freezr [OP] · May 25 at 14:05:
@dimkr I don't have any technical reasons to explain, besides the fact that by design AP is meant for one-on-one interaction. But I know that from now on AP will be shaped to be what Meta and other corporations want.
I am always been a fan of Diaspora, not sure if the diaspora-protocol is enough plastic to offer the variety of platform AP does, maybe it can, but Diaspora is a full community project, while, AP is a project baked by the W3C, and this is an institution that I don't trust anymore, and therefore I don't trust AP.
@freezr This is not accurate, most ActivityPub implementations support the sharedInbox property. If you're on server A and have 1000 followers on server B and 1000 more on C, A sends only 2 requests when you write a post: one to B and one to C (not one request per follower).
i like diaspora, but believe me the community has its own problems. lets say admin community forces some podmins to ban some users, and they threaten podmins by banning their pods.
❄ freezr [OP] · May 26 at 03:36:
@norayr never heard anything of this... 🤷♂️
❄ freezr [OP] · May 26 at 03:41:
@dimkr what I meant is when you interact with someone only this person gets a reply plus the ones you mentioned, all the others don't, on Diaspora/Hubzilla/Friendica all the people involved in a thread are informed and can reply to all without the need to mention anyone. This is a feature that some want to add to ActivityPub.
@norayr: With GPL if you are running a business, you are taking on a liability and will have to constantly explain to investors why you are publishing the work they are paying for. And making sure some fool doesn't commit company secrets or racist jokes into the public repo. I would definitely avoid it if possible.
Or find a way to comply without complying. Years ago I had to work with an early version of gcc on the arm. The toolchain was maintained by a company that sold an expensive version and a year later would update the source to comply. I don't think you could even compile it: the make file was hardwired to some guy's machine...
Intellectual property is a joke. If you want control, don't publish. Once it's out, you can't tell people what to do with it without pointing a gun at them.
@freezr That's also inaccurate, some ActivityPub implementations ignore https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#inbox-forwarding and that's why only thread participants can see replies. For example, tootik forwards all replies in a thread to followers of the user who started the thread (with depth limit). It's an implementation issue, not a problem with the protocol itself.
@freezr If you're talking about mentioning somebody in a reply vs. not mentioning, and the notification Mastodon shows if you do, that's 100% a Mastodon thing. ActivityPub doesn't define how notifications should work, and not all implementations insist on you mentioning somebody for them to get notified or receive the reply. Maybe you just don't like Mastodon 😐
❄ freezr [OP] · May 26 at 05:39:
Absolutely I don't like mastodon... At all...
❄ freezr [OP] · May 26 at 05:53:
@dimkr I didn't read the specification, I don't believe I am even able to understand it... Perhaps Mastodon, since took over all the AP projects, inducted me to have a bad opinion about it...
The point is before the AP protocol there were also the diaspora protocol, the friendica protocol, the hubzilla protocol , however on the internet always prevails what the W3C decides...
Well, after the scandal of the DRM inside the HTML5 the W3C is not credible anymore as a "super partes" entity... For me can be erased anytime, as well as anything it does or promotes...
@freezr Nobody should read the specification because nobody *really* follows it - Mastodon ignores big parts, adds stuff (like HTTP signatures) and everybody implements their own, quirky but compatible-enough variant of ActivityPub. But ActivityPub itself seems fine to me: without insulting those who wrote this long specification, at the end of the day it's just a bunch of JSONs over HTTPS. Mastodon's *implementation* is the problem most of the time: the biggest fedi instances are Mastodon and sometimes they don't pass posts to other instances, don't show a reply without mention, ... they coerce other software and users to mimic Mastodon's implementation quirks.
❄ freezr [OP] · May 26 at 06:54:
@dmkir and this does Mastond with 10M users, now try to figure what is going to do Threads with its 150M users... 😩
@freezr I bet Threads follows the Mastodon 'dialect' of ActivityPub, and I think that people should calm down, limit post audience and block users+instances they don't like if they don't want their posts to feed AI/trackers. Threads won't 'break' the fediverse unless instances with viral posts don't have enough disk space, bandwidth and database compute to handle the extra load - for people who aren't social media influencers and don't follow such people, it probably won't be a problem 😼
@freezr
What do you don't like with Mastodon? I am curious to have a different opinion, as a user of Mastodon
Edit: I am sorry, I talked before reading. I didn't saw that you already answered this question.
freezr, i wanted to feedback on what you've said that bufore activity pub there were different protocols: diaspora, friendica, hubzilla, etc, and then the w3c ap dominated.
my understanding is, from what i have read and remember about the history of the fediverse, is that all the people behind those decentralized social networks gathered together to design a new protocol, and asked if w3c would agree to host the protocol group under their umbrella, since they pass jsons via http.
diaspora devs decided to not participate. that's why all adopted the protocol except diaspora.
but it's not rike w3c pushed something or had an interest to push something. they just agreed to give their name basically.
btw how does that go/feel?
❄ freezr [OP] · Jun 06 at 03:08:
@norayr I have totally different memories. W3C stepped in because the relative success of Diaspora, Friendica and Hubzilla, with Diaspora being the most diffuse.
The problem with the W3C and Diaspora, for what I can remember, were determined by the fact that Diaspora asked to be the protocol.
In the same period the W3C was working to find a solution or a resolution regarding the DRM.
And that is when became clear that the W3C was just another tool in the hands of GAFAM and the fact that any internet thing must obey to the W3C will.
🚀 Going full Gemini — Since I am extremely disappointed by the weird course of ActivityPub, Mastodon, Threads and BlueSky... I am seriously considering to do 30 or even 60 days challenge using exclusively Gemini for my online social activities... 🤔