this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
34 points (92.5% liked)

Fediverse

17508 readers
30 users here now

A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

Getting started on Fediverse;

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

With BlueSky moving towards finally opening up federation, I'm interested in how people feel about it?

Would you be open to the idea of Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, and other Fediverse platforms adopting the AT protocol in order to federate with it?

If those technical hurdles could be overcome, would you support your instance federating with BlueSky?

Does the same go for other commercially-owned platforms, such as Threads and Tumblr?

#BlueSky #Fediverse #Threads #Mastodon @fediverse

all 45 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @fediverse Why would existing :fediverse: servers waste breath to support Bluesky's protocol? Let Bluesky implement ActivityPub - should not go backwards πŸ€” Otherwise why even bother?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No point in adapting to their protocol, that's for sure.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't know, account portability would be kind of cool. With ActivityPub with a ban or server shutdown, your account is just gone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Thats just one feature, might be possible to implement in AP.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse
> Would you be open to the idea of Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, and other Fediverse platforms adopting the AT protocol in order to federate with it?

Hell no. Let them adopt AP which is a standard.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @fediverse
I expect connecting with BlueSky would do more harm than good, so effort spent making it happen seems not worth it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If we talking about the complete structure of the fediverse changing to connect to a single service (like abandoning Activity Pup and instead using a closed protocol that is controlled only by one company), then definitely Yes that is the worst idea even.

But since many fediverse services will simply not be able to use Blue Sky's protocol, because it is designed for a very limited use case, I don't even see why should talk about this.

However if Blue sky would adapt to the fediverse. It would only be a win for us. If they decide to not play by the rules they will be band. Fediverse is very robust and we don't need to be afraid of anything as long as we stick too our basic principles.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

The path forward I think would be some sort of a bridge service. Think of it as a translation layer that could take in updates from both ActivityPub and AT, and present to the opposing side like it were native. Something similar was developed for nostr to communicate with the fediverse, and it seems at least feasible in this case as well.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

@ajsadauskas I mainly wanna keep Fedi mostly noncommercial and entirely nonproprietary.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

As someone who's used both, the way federation works on Bluesky/Atproto is very different to how ActivityPub works. It's very much a backend thing, letting that do the heavy lifting and prevent the user from worrying about it as much as you have to here, rather than trying to make its fediverse a whole experience.

As for Tumblr, there was talk about bringing it to the fediverse and Wordpress themselves have already allowed users of their hosted blog service to opt-in to this, but have not done it for Tumblr. And Threads? Well, there was a pact to fediblock Threads because of its ties to Facebook, so there's that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately it seems like development on Tumblr has been reduced to a skeleton crew. I wouldn't hold my breath for ActivityPub integration on that front now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah :\

They did mention that they were planning to make Tumblr open-source, which might've been why they said that. I could see ActivityPub integration there in that event.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

@Flaky @ajsadauskas yeah I think people are being ridiculous acting like this is some plot to destabilize mastodon and not genuinely trying to improve the flaws in activitypub, whatever their other motivations may be

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse

"No billionaires, probably no VCs" has been a very useful razor for me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse why would we trust them?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse

This came to digital blows over whether to federate with Threads not so long ago. A LOT of us said hell no to letting Meta's data vampirism and sociopathic surveillance back into our networks.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Hubzilla will support it for sure

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Bluesky doesn't even have an app available for us who don't have access to the google store. So it is a no go for me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Let's have this conversation once BlueSky is actually open

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I would like to see some sort of bridge built to allow communication between AT protocol services and ActivityPub protocol services.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

For now we only have one instance on BlueSky but I'm deffinitly moving to my own self hosted one (when they enable us to do so)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Seems like there is a lot of people in this thread that are confused about BlueSky federating even means. BlueSky's plans for federation have nothing to do with the fediverse. It's about enabling federation with other AT protocol services, including self-hosting a personal data server.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse I'd quite like to be able to link up with people I miss who are on other platforms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I go where the people are and the technology serves me best. For now, it’s ActivityPub. If I end up liking AT and most people are on it, I will be there too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @fediverse my understanding is that the models and design principles are completely different between AT and AP.

But even if technical and philosophical hurdles could be overcome, I think adding 2M Extremely Online users to fedi would be a wash; it seems like most people pick either fedi or bsky for cultural reasons and smooshing the two together would just make everyone unhappy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse
...on the other hand, isekai-ing ten thousand German FOSS reply guys into the World of Shitposting and Discourse* would result in some entertaining fireworks, so who's to say?

* Oops I accidentally a Homestuck reference (and I don't even like Homestuck). Clearly the platform I spend too much time on isn't fedi or bsky - it's Tumblr.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse

Mo' protocols mo' problems.

What does the AT protocol offer software already using ActivityPub?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Once they've transferred governance to some other entity, sure. That's gonna take years though, they said so themselves. Standardizing a protocol isn't something that can be done overnight, and that's fully their intention with ATProto.

I'm keenly interested in the protocol, but I also question its flexibility as to the content it can be used to post and distribute. That's something we'll have to wait for federation to come to see people start playing with. If it becomes a standard, governed by a non-partisan body, and is flexible to a variety of content types, I see no reason to stay with ActivityPub except that the software's already here.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse they have no interest in it other than scraping and selling data, and using the broader fediverse to boost their own numbers to make it appear like a successful platform.

There is no benefit to us to do it, only benefit to them. I question the motives. Who benefits if not us? Why?

Why would we let a money-motivated, privacy-hating horde federate?