#activitypub

See, what makes Mastodon less worse than something like Twitter or Bluesky or, god forbid, fucking Threads, is that it has escape hatches. You may not like being told “go find another instance,” but you can go find another instance, and that is fucking spectacular. Twitter started going into the shitter even before Elon Seig Heil Musk painted a big “X” on it with his dick, but did you all just say “sucks, man,” and fuck off to another Twitter instance? No! Why not? Because there were no other fucking Twitter instances!

This project has multiple goals. First, it's a demonstration of how to build an ActivityPub server, with most of the important parts implemented. It should be useful for implementers who want to know how ActivityPub works in the real world. Second, it's a platform for testing and experimentation with new client apps and new server features.

An ActivityPub server with an NNTP interface.

So the fediverse is technically open and culturally anxious about it.

I think Bluesky is doing about as good a job as a group of people can do with the design they have and are trying to preserve. But I don't think the global context-collapse firehose works, and I'm not sure it's what users want it either, and if they do, they really seem to want both strong central control to meet their needs but also to not have strong central control be a thing that exists when it doesn't.

So what's it like to set up your own GotoSocial server? Well, I can walk you thru what I used for my setup. Yours might be different; that's OK! I made these up-front choices to simplify the operational overhead because I didn't want this to be a hassle and I don't need the extra engineering that comes from trying for nine nines of uptime:

Bluesky is built by good people who care, and it is providing something that people desperately want and need. If you are looking for a Twitter replacement, you can find it in Bluesky today. However, I stand by my assertions that Bluesky is not meaningfully decentralized and that it is certainly not federated according to any technical definition of federation we have had in a decentralized social network context previously. To claim that Bluesky is decentralized or federated in its current form moves the goalposts of both of those terms, which I find unacceptable. However, "credible exit" is a reasonable term to describe what Bluesky is aiming for. It is Bluesky's term, and I think Bluesky should embrace that term fully in all contexts and work that they can.

If they’re motivated, tooled up, and plugged into communities of support fediverse server teams can provide context-sensitive, high-touch local moderation for their members—while also connecting to a broad landscape of other well-governed servers. But can new fediverse members find them?

The reason I think these problems are worth solving is because one of most valuable gifts of the fediverse as it currently exists is the ability to experience the fediverse from within a home server that is good for you—that cares about your experience, that moderates (locally and remotely) in ways that meet your needs and protect you from the things you actually want protection from, that is built to last.

A federated microblogging software for single-users. ActivityPub-enabled, Mastodon-compatible API, supports CommonMark and Misskey-style quotes.

ActivityPub server framework in TypeScript. Contribute to dahlia/fedify development by creating an account on GitHub.

ActivityPub-enabled microblogs are gaining popularity as a replacement for Twitter, but ActivityPub is for more than just microblogging

ActivityPub-enabled microblogs are gaining popularity as a replacement for Twitter, but ActivityPub is for more than just microblogging

Simply hop on Xibalba BBS and let me (NuSkooler) know you’d like to join in. You’ll get an @YourName@Xibalba.l33t.codes Fediverse address with the ability to both post and read public and private messages.

Simply hop on Xibalba BBS and let me (NuSkooler) know you’d like to join in. You’ll get an @YourName@Xibalba.l33t.codes Fediverse address with the ability to both post and read public and private messages.

The tech industry is abuzz about a new standard for social networking that is more open, more user-centric, and potentially more powerful than Twitter and Facebook. But we’ve been here before.

If delivery is going to take a non-trivial amount of time, you should focus on delivering to the people who are going to notice first.

Follow, react and publish across your Mastodon instance

Follow, react and publish across your Mastodon instance

It occurred to me today that ActivityPub is the new, modern FidoNet(-style) networking. Sure you have W3C publishing official specifications, but what you mostly have is every day “hackers” putting the protocol to work building decentralized communications. Anyway, the specifications are quote vague at best, which in this case, I’m going to consider a feature. In other words, a lot like FidoNet.

It occurred to me today that ActivityPub is the new, modern FidoNet(-style) networking. Sure you have W3C publishing official specifications, but what you mostly have is every day “hackers” putting the protocol to work building decentralized communications. Anyway, the specifications are quote vague at best, which in this case, I’m going to consider a feature. In other words, a lot like FidoNet.