ubergeek comments on Happy #GlobalSwitchDay

Are we claiming now that Activity Pub is the only protocol that we can use for the fediverse? I think XMPP is roughly 30 years old at this point, and I'm pretty sure Activity Pub is much younger than that. I could be wrong though.

But regardless, I don't see why Activity Pub has to be the only protocol we accept to be considered a part of the fediverse. It's not even like different AP implementations talk to each other all that well. My understanding is that Mastodon doesn't federate that well with Lemmy, and I haven't seen Loops or Pixelfed on Lemmy yet either.

I'd be happy to be corrected on any of this though, I haven't looked too closely into exactly how AP works or how it's supposed to interoperate with different applications.

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[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I mean, yeah... the fediverse, specifically, are AP servers, which is why we don't include diaspora for it.

It's decentralized and federated, to be sure, just not the "fediverse".

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[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 point 2 years ago* (3 children)

Fediverse is about federation. It’s not Activityverse. So yeah, email, Usenet, IRC, XMPP, Matrix… all Fediverse, all an antidote to corporate walled gardens.

Edit: not demeaning AP, it’s a great achievement and the services built upon it are a testament to its quality and forward-thinking.

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[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm just saying that there's deficiencies in those other networks. Just that they are different networks.

Now if an xmpp user can directly message or communicate with a Mastodon user... then they'd be both part of the "fediverse".

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[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

I am a Lemmy user, can I message a Pixelfed user? All other AP users? Signal users?

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[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 1 point 2 years ago

Signal, no. And yes, Lemmy's integration via AP is sub-perfect. Ie, I can (and do) follow communities on lemmy, with my Mastodon and pixelfed accounts.

So, work is needed, and only happens if a) same protocol is used, or b) bridge modules are used (like friendica does).

If someone made an xmpp bridge to talk AP, then it's would be one big network, like how a lot of irc nets get bridged with xmpp nets, which makes those one, singular, federated network. But until they start speaking the protocol the rest of the fediverse does, it's just another network.

And again, it's not a bad thing. It'll even probably get there eventually.

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[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'd like to argue that using AP is an inconsistent rule for membership. For example, Diaspora has been considered to be part of the fediverse from early on, but it doesn't use AP.

I don't really know where to draw the line. AP simply isn't suitable for some applications, but it makes sense to include it for branding

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[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

I don't know of anyone who include d*, accepting the tiny number of d* pods that also speak AP.

I mean, nostr is also NOT part of the fediverse, but another federated and decentralized network.

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[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 years ago

Both Wikipedia and fediverse.party consider Diaspora, and a handful of other (mostly defunct) protocols as being part of the fediverse.

I don't really like the use of AP to be a qualification of being in the fediverse. There must be a better way to qualify a platform, even if it means that use of AP is a natural consequence.

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