this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023

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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.

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Can ActivityPub save the internet? (www.theverge.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Imagine a world without platform lock-in, where no ban or billionaire could take down your social network. That’s what ActivityPub has planned.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (14 children)

I have my skepticisms about this whole thing. While I know the answer is "they will be defederated", what if one of the big ones, like lemmy.world or lemmy.ml get huge, then sell out to something like Meta?

We lost 3rd party apps and we are morning the biggest breakup we've ever had with reddit. Say the server you've had your account on for so long and all your content gets taken over by a giant with strategically placed adds that are upvoted by bot armies for visibility. They may get defederated, but that means Meta just came in and destroyed a huge chunk of users accounts while gaining some ad revenue for a bit until the community dies. Everyone has to actively pack up their shit and move to another instance. I guess the loyalty to an account is less with a lack of account karma so it wouldn't burn as bad.

You would lose all your subscribed communities when you are forced to move out. That would suck. Too bad you couldn't export like a .db file from your account on the way out and upload it to another account on another instance. Possibly some sort of encrypted key so you can auto add as a mod to any community you were modding on your previous account. No clue if that makes any sense. Kinda Like a lemmy "Go-Bag"?

I don't know, just thinking ahead of the shenanigans that's going to happen if this really starts making a dent in huge corporations user counts.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Mastondon does allow you to export your profiles and set them up on a different instance; I reckon some folks will figure out a solution on how to easily jump ship.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is one of the biggest things I think Lemmy needs. You should be able to create a backup of your profile and export/import it into another instance. That way if something happens or you have a problem with the instance admins you can migrate with no loss or minimal loss to your account.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

i'll be honest hearing lemmy while being on kbin threw me into a loop, made me wonder if i was in a lemmy community and not a kbin magazine lmao. i gotta get used to this.

But yeah, both Lemmy and Kbin need the same flexibility of Mastodon. The more easily one can move, the less likely megacorps will see value in gobbling up instances. Long-term goal might be cross-platform profile compatibility, but right now that's a pipe dream.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

To be fair, kbine doesn't label things very well right now. I'm using both, and Lemmy makes it far more clear where a post is coming from.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

That's one annoying thing with kbin, the other being no quick access to subs list. I still like it better than Lemmy right now.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

I think one limiting factor that has yet to be addressed is that you can move your profile, but you can't move your content. Another is identity. How do you know which Mastodon server has an authoritative (i.e. "blue-check") profile for a given person/entity?

edit: Search indexing is also a huge problem. While it's possible to create a search index over all content local to a given server, maintaining an index over all content on all servers that you federate is a much bigger problem.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Mastodon has the seeds of this authority in that you can put links on your profile and then have them flagged by putting code on the website. So my Mastodon account could have a link to kazuyadarklightofficial.com and the flag proves I own/control that site. So if you know/can determine that site is THE KazuyaDarklight site, then you know you have the right Mastodon account.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I think once lemmy has this, and it’s easy, it’ll achieve even greater success.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I've been online for close to 30 years now.

I've lost count of the number of forums I've had to leave because they went to shit.

I always find another one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Same here. My domain name and email address will turn 30 next March. I've been doing this since the days when Usenet posts were transmitted across sites using UUCP.

We will always find the next place. Reddit has peaked and is destroying itself and it's time to move on.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (8 children)

That's why we need to decentralize. If there's 100 communities over 50 servers, then it doesn't matter which website goes down or defederates. It's only if everyone stays on one or two instances that the fediverse breaks.

Over on mastodon, big instances have gone down, people notice but it isnt the end of the world.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I mean I can't be the only one who doesn't enjoy the idea of setting up a new account if the ship you picked in the beginning sinks a few years later. You make it sound so simple but at least to me it would be a huge drag.

[–] mkhoury 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

This is why having frictionless one-button migration seems really important to me. Imagine that your Lemmy client keeps a constant backup of your profile so that if and when your instance go down, you can set up shop somewhere else super easily. Or when an instance get too big, or when you feel like it, you can instance-hop super simply. This is the future I'd want. You control your profile, noone else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I remember having read that it's on the dev's roadmap but they're obviously swamped right now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Honestly, this isn't even necessary. The only thing that needs to be implemented is federated authentication, because then you could log in to any instance with one set of credentials. Since the content you post/comment is already replicated locally on other instances, you wouldn't even need to import/export anything, it would already exist on the other instances.

Implement federated user authentication and you're golden.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

My POV is a bit different than most people, because I built my own ship, and I reach out to other instances using it.

Because I agree, I don't want to be relying on someone else to maybe grace me with a fediverse account.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (4 children)

@Guy_Fieris_Hair I doubt that lemmy.ml or lemmy as a whole would sell-out to Facebook as they are Tankies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why do I keep seeing people say this in passing without any sort of evidence. Feels like reddit/Twitter type of culture

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I feel there will at some point be a "this is why we can't have nice things" moment with ActivityPub and Federation in general.

Karma is probably pretty easy to farm using fake home servers or botted accounts, and other kinds spam is probably going to be an issue if this platform reaches any level of mainstream popularity.

I think many parallels can be drawn between ActivityPub and E-mail, here. E-mail works, but not without a lot of gatekeeping, blocking and spam. Its really hard not to get blocked as a self hosted email server today, you are probably going to be mostly blocked by default until you build somewhat of a reputation for your server, etc. I foresee similar levels of maintenance being needed in the future in order to keep servers federated.

As far as moving your account, some things are easier than others to deal with. Things such as subscriptions and likes is probably a lot easier to move to a new account than entire post histories and such.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I wonder if there could be a universal subscribed communities + followed users data format people could export before they move instances. Hard part would be getting everyone to use it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Popular pieces of software that's part of the fediverse usually give you either:

Export options - manual export options intended for GDPR-Compliance and peace of mind
Account Move options - Mastodon is best known for this, as you can migrate your profile (but not your posts and followers) to another instance. Anyone which then visits your old page will have it blurred out, linking to your new one.

#2 could be expanded in the case of Kbin and Lemmy to also include subscribed communities/magazines, settings and some other things where Federation allows for it.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Jury is till out it’s way too early to tell. The fediverse seems very unrefined still (which I kind of enjoy tbh). If its truly going “save the internet”, a lot of refining needs to be done in order to attract at a mainstream scale.

It’s been really refreshing so far though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It is really strange, in that it WORKS like the old Wild West of Web 2.0 when it was all blogs and RSS feeds but it doesn't FEEL like the Wild West. It's definitely civilization here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

WORKS like the old Wild West of Web 2.0

Well said

I’m hoping that now that we have seen a fair share of social media companies rise and fall and why they’ve fallen, many people will begin to find out what they are looking for in a social media network.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

agreed. It’s got bugs, and scalability issues, but i’m liking to “quirkiness” of it. I’ve most most of my stuff to the fediverse so far. It’ll need a lot more polishing to attract mainstream attention, but it’s nice to have this option.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

“But at the very least, if a server goes down, it should not be catastrophic to you.” Your social world shouldn’t live inside an app, she says, or depend on a company staying solvent. It should, and could, be much bigger than that.

Exactly

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Alright so I'm skeptical we'll keep a useful level of signal to noise the whole time (Usenet). But, for the first time in forever I'm optimistic, there's a lot more technical talent and awareness of how bad it can go this time around, which is amazing to see.

I still don't think people have grappled with the fact there's no total "erase" button even if you can port your data.

But we have open standards again, it feels weird.

[–] Fiivemacs 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I ahve massive issues being federated with Facebook, twitter and the other billionaire tech giants. No thanks. I do NOT want them to be able to feed me information. Corporations should have zero ability to discuss or provide input into the lives or regular humans. They have done enough damage and it's time they be silenced.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

But can't you control what instances you consume?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

It's like Web 1.0, all over again, but this time with better technology

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Really good article.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It already has for me. Most websites I visit today I run myself. How amazing is that?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

It’s the digital equivalent of off-grid living. I love how much useful tooling I can host myself on my little cluster, and it is empowering that $megacorp can’t hold it hostage or shove hostile tracking and advertising everywhere. The Fedeverse feels much closer to the spirit of the internet in its infancy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Can the verge build a pc?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

That's what ActivityPub has planned.

Well, that is kind of what ActivityPub is already allowing us to do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

ACTIVITYPUB!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

indeed, an excellent article.

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