this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Eh, bluesky is another federated solution, that turned out to be quite similar to activitypub. Perhaps not in implementation, but in user experience. And after having used activitypub for quite a while, I don't think it is the solution to decentralised social media.
I've been really enjoying nostr, even though it doesn't have the content or user base of the fediverse just yet.
Curious what you think the issues with AP are. Other than the nature of the fediverse being confusing to new users (not sure which instance to sign up for, etc), I haven’t had any issues with it. I would like to see community syncing between instances for more seamless discovery, though.
Complexity to new users is definitely not better on nostr, just as confusing if not worse, currently. The reason I think nostr is on a better track than AP, is because I came to AP running from problems that I had on reddit, only to find the same problems on a smaller scale. Here's what I can think of off the top of my head:
To be truly sovereign on AP, you gotta run your own instance, which is very impractical, and lacks nomadic identities. With nostr, you own your identity, because your identity is just a cryptographic key, which can be used anywhere, on any node.
To be clear, I think AP is a clear improvement over centralised services, thus why I still use it. I won't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I just think nostr is the better protocol to build decentralised services on top of.
I don't get the first point. Do you think having variety in clients is a bad thing or do you think the variety in clients is not big enough and actually what does this have to do with the protocol?
The other points do appear that strong to me if we talk about developing a service and more about people who don't want to host or do anything themselves but still want to have full control... Actually I think the better moderation structure that comes with AP is a plus point. I want a free web and not total anarchy in which the loudest wins.
Biggest strength of AP in my eyes is that it's a W3C standard. AT was developed by a company to fulfill that company's goal.
I think having many clients is a good thing. The reddit API debacle was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and got me to move away from centralised services.
I can see how some people would prefer that, but Nostr also has a solution to this need. Not as good an experience as AP, if that's specifically what you're looking for, but nonetheless. If you want a curated, modded and filtered experience, you can just connect on to nostr nodes that filter heavily.
I thought this when I came to AP at first too, but it's been a W3C standard for a long time, and is still very niche.
Is it really? I mean there are already many completely independent platforms built on it (Lemmy, Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed... To only name a few)
Plus recently existing platforms changing to use AP like Flipboard for example or threads (even if nobody is happy about the last 😅)
Additionally AP protocol can be adapted and extended over time if it's really needed. That would also be an option in the long run.
I meant niche in terms of amount of users, not implementations.
But amount of users is actually more a product of marketing than any technical protocol so I don't really see that point either. Also I don't see that being true, especially if you count in all the threads users.
My point of it being a W3C standard is more that it is a protocol that is in somewhat responsible hands. When using a protocol that was developed by and only for one (commercial) application in minds other players are always one step behind.
Mastodon (or threads) as the main platforms that implement AP don't have any more influence on the protocol than any other platform as well.
I wrote a long answer to this, but forgot to post and lost it :(. But here's what I wanted to say:
I forgot about Threads, that's indeed a big user base.
Just because the standard is managed by the W3C doesn't mean they'll do a good job of managing it, but it's probably more positive than negative.
I don't know enough about how the W3C is organised and accepts contributions, but wasn't one of the concerns of many AP users when threads announced their AP integration, that threads would immediately become a big player and essentially EEE AP? Tbh, I still fear that.
I'm enjoying this conversation, it's brought my hopes for AP a bit higher, I hope I've managed to convince you that nostr is something to keep an eye on.
Yes this EEE fear exists but I think it's unreasonable in my eyes. AP being managed by W3C is one reason for it.
Sure Meta will probably extend AP for their own use but it's not that they can simply decide that the new feature that they introduced and is at first only working on their platform is the standard from now.
I definitely agree that Nostr is something to keep an eye on but for me that's more about to see if there is stuff that works and can be introduced in AP as well. Because of all the arguments above I don't think we should all switch to Nostr now.
Maybe not formally, but it might not matter. Looking at how google implemented XMPP, then slightly changed their implemetentaion until it was incompatible, and clients tried to keep up with changes, makes me fear meta will do something similar.
Yes they probably will.
But my point would be that with AP being W3C and not management by meta or a different company the ecosystem of it can survive.
And too be fair until recently I still used XMPP so it was never dead. I think it was just that almost no one ever heard about it before Google used it and also almost no one really cared about it while Google used it. So the resulting consequence was that once Google dropped off completely it went back to no one really using it (like it was before).
AP already having a decent user base (some million active users, official accounts and instances of big institutions like the EU commission e.g.) even without threads and a big eco system(very diverse platforms and projects), there is no need for any platform to adapt to anything coming from meta. Things are good (enough) how they are currently.
It's not that we need to compete or couldn't exist without Meta.
Yeah, I thought of these points too, my fear is that it won't matter that it isn't managed by meta and people will go along with whatever meta does.
Though to be completely fair, I have the exact same fear for other decentralised protocols, including nostr. Perhaps the only one I think is resilient to this situation is bitcoin, for better or for worse.
Nostr has a small userbase but on the right track.
Downvoted for stating an opinion, huh? Great, feels like I'm back on reddit.
Instead of downvoting because you disagree, please reply to my comment with the reason.