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Sat, 25 Feb 2023 12:25:44 +0100

Stark9837@techhub.social

@fediversenews

What is the definition of the #fediverse? Is it services that use #activitypub or anything decentralized? When we motivate people to use the #fediverse or promote it. What are we expecting from them?

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Sat, 25 Feb 2023 16:44:01 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

Technically speaking, the #Fediverse includes all #federated instances of all projects that use certain protocols. But it's hard to say where the borders are.

It's true that the Fediverse is more than just #Mastodon. Many Mastodon users still don't know that because they haven't heard of any other Fediverse project yes, some even reject it and want the Fediverse to be Mastodon and Mastodon only.

So for starters, the Fediverse contains everything that uses #ActivityPub, that has federation on, and that isn't widely defederated/Fediblocked.

This also includes services which don't have ActivityPub as their core protocols, but which understand them: #Friendica (core protocol: DFRN), #Hubzilla (core protocol: Zot6), #Streams (core protocol: Nomad). Whereas Friendica and Streams have ActivityPub always on, it's optional on Hubzilla, both hub-wise and channel-wise. Most hubs have it installed, though, and most channels have it on.

By the way, if you say that Friendica is not in the Fediverse, then this entire thread doesn't happen in the Fediverse. @Fediverse News runs on Friendica.

Now it gets complicated: Is #Diaspora (the "Facebook killer" spectacularly crowd-funded in summer 2010) part of the Fediverse, or isn't it?

Diaspora* is decentralised, distributed and federated all within itself. Still, it was designed as a walled garden. Diaspora* was never meant to connect to anything else. It's like XMPP without gateways or Matrix without bridges.

Then came Friendica which, at that time, had the goal to federate with just about everything that moved. Diaspora*, still an alpha release, didn't have an API. So the Friendica devs reverse-engineered Diaspora*'s protocol, developed a connector and federated Friendica with Diaspora*.

To this day, not much more than Friendica and Hubzilla can federate with Diaspora*. But you may still find a post from a Friendica user in your Mastodon timeline with a comment from a Diaspora* user. Diaspora* doesn't federate with Mastodon, but that comment went from Diaspora* via Friendica to the ActivityPub-speaking parts of the Fediverse.

So on the one hand, Diaspora* is connected to projects that speak ActivityPub. On the other hand, this has never been Diaspora*'s own development or achievement, and it doesn't directly federate with Mastodon or any other Fediverse project, save for those select few.

Besides, if Diaspora* counted as part of the Fediverse, then so should e-mail, WordPress and everything that uses RSS. Friendica and Hubzilla federate with these as well. Those of you who follow me should find in their Mastodon timelines two automatically reposted blog posts per week from a blog which I've subscribed to via RSS. Hubzilla can do that.

Speaking of Hubzilla, entire hubs without ActivityPub are another edge-case. They don't connect to any projects that only know ActivityPub. However, they, too, can indirectly communicate with ActivityPub instances through either Friendica (by means of the Diaspora* protocol unless that's turned off, too) or Streams-based instances (Streams' Nomad is basically a newer version of Hubzilla's Zot, so both speak a common language).

Nonetheless, I dare say there's no denying that Hubzilla itself is part of the Fediverse.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 16:58:00 +0100 zuletzt bearbeitet: Sat, 25 Feb 2023 16:58:15 +0100

Stark

Stark9837@techhub.social

@fediversenews @jupiter_rowland @crafti @steve @aswath

Are there other protocols similar to #activitypub? After reading the ActivityPub paper, it is clear that although its main intention is to be for social media and communication, it can be implemented to be used for something like #peertube.

But is there a protocol for other types of websites?

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:00:33 +0100

[HUGS] crafti :verified_neko: :pansexual: :nonbinary:

crafti@akkoma.0x68756773.moe

@Stark9837 @fediversenews @jupiter_rowland @steve @aswath OStatus used to be the OG, but nowadays it's seen as deprecated. Diaspora has its own protocol iirc

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:07:02 +0100

🍄🌈🎮💻🚲🥓🎃💀🏴🛻🇺🇸

schizanon@mas.to

@Stark9837
@fediversenews @jupiter_rowland @crafti @steve @aswath

RSS be like

#Peertube #ActivityPub

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:07:46 +0100

[HUGS] crafti :verified_neko: :pansexual: :nonbinary:

crafti@akkoma.0x68756773.moe

@schizanon @Stark9837 @fediversenews @jupiter_rowland @steve @aswath RSS is not forgotten but it isn't directly a replacement for AP since it's effectively read-only

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:08:50 +0100

[HUGS] crafti :verified_neko: :pansexual: :nonbinary:

crafti@akkoma.0x68756773.moe

@schizanon @Stark9837 @aswath @fediversenews @jupiter_rowland @steve In theory, you can do two feeds that reference each other but that's more hackish than proper.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:12:17 +0100

Stark

Stark9837@techhub.social

@crafti @jupiter_rowland @aswath @schizanon @steve @fediversenews and it is more an interface. It is used by other services to read another. But when something is posted, or as #activitypub calls it an activity, #rss doesn't have a communication protocol.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:13:44 +0100

[HUGS] crafti :verified_neko: :pansexual: :nonbinary:

crafti@akkoma.0x68756773.moe

@Stark9837 @jupiter_rowland @aswath @schizanon @steve @fediversenews Yeah, exactly that thought/aspect.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:14:42 +0100

🍄🌈🎮💻🚲🥓🎃💀🏴🛻🇺🇸

schizanon@mas.to

@Stark9837 @crafti @jupiter_rowland @aswath @steve @fediversenews RSS has HTTP too

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:16:24 +0100

[HUGS] crafti :verified_neko: :pansexual: :nonbinary:

crafti@akkoma.0x68756773.moe

@schizanon @Stark9837 @jupiter_rowland @aswath @steve @fediversenews I don't think this matters though because HTTP is only a means of delivery and most clients for RSS do GET requests only. ActivityPub uses HTTP too, but it actively makes use of the different request methods, which enables it to go two-way.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:16:38 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Stark There is, for example, #Zot. Zot was created along with a #Friendica "fork" (actually almost complete rewrite) named #RedMatrix which, upon its 1.x release, become #Hubzilla.

I don't have the exact technical specs, but it should work similarly to #ActivityPub. It's much much more powerful, though.

For starters, Zot was created for something that goes even beyond federation, namely #NomadicIdentity. Not only does it facilitate the move an entire channel from one instance to another, it lets you have your channel on multiple instances at once and automatically keeps all copies in sync. If the hub with your main channel on it goes down, doesn't matter, you have an identical clone or several.

Besides, Zot was not only designed for messaging. After all, Zot can keep channel on that monster named Hubzilla in sync. With everything on them. Not only posts, entire threads and contacts, but articles, wikis, notes, the content of your WebDAV-equipped cloud file storage, your public event calendar, your private CalDAV calendars, your private CardDAV address book etc.

This gets really interesting if you're on Hubzilla, and you have another Hubzilla channel amongst your contacts. That channel may have a number of nomadic clones, but you only see one of them as the main one. The channel owner can seamlessly change which one is the main, and all you notice is that the hub URL has changed.

The current and last version of Zot is Zot6, originally developed for and with the Hubzilla successors #Osada and #Zap, then backported to Hubzilla.

#Streams, basically a code repository which evolved from Zap through another two steps, already uses #Nomad, a kind of successor to Zot which nonetheless can communicate with Zot. Streams shows what Nomad is capable of: Instead of a "fully-featured" server platform, Streams is meant to be a code base for advanced Fediverse projects, i.e. you can strap onto it whatever you want to develop. Whatever it may be, Nomad can keep it in sync between multiple instances.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:18:32 +0100

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

benpate@mastodon.social

@Stark9837 @steve @schizanon @aswath @jupiter_rowland @crafti @fediversenews RSS is a different animal, so things don’t map 1:1. However, #WebSub and #RSSCloud both make real-time publishing of RSS feeds possible. And they’re so much easier to implement. The main drawback I’ve seen is that RSS can’t carry the same amount or fidelity of information, which is why ActivityPub is still the better protocol.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:19:49 +0100

🍄🌈🎮💻🚲🥓🎃💀🏴🛻🇺🇸

schizanon@mas.to

@crafti @jupiter_rowland @aswath @steve @Stark9837 @fediversenews

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:23:25 +0100

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

benpate@mastodon.social

@jupiter_rowland sounds like VHS vs Betamax all over again. The less advanced technology wins out because other market forces are more important than the technical solutions they bring to the table.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:23:26 +0100

Ben Pate 🤘🏻

benpate@mastodon.social

@jupiter_rowland Also, thank you for the history lesson. I will definitely dig deeper into Friendica, Zot, and Hubzilla to learn how they’re doing this. Nomadic identity seems like the holy grail of the Fediverse.

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:27:31 +0100

Stark

Stark9837@techhub.social

@jupiter_rowland Thank you very much. I have never heard of any of these technologies before and will definitely be checking them out!!

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:29:45 +0100

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Ben Pate ? Maybe it's because Hubzilla and Zot were too obscure back in the day for anyone to know them. After all, still today, I guess every other Friendica user hasn't heard of Hubzilla yet. And back when Mastodon was designed, nobody even knew Friendica.

Or maybe it's because Zot would have been considered utter overkill for something as simple as microblogging. Had they only known how many people struggled with moving between Mastodon instances in the last months...

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 17:55:59 +0100

Darren du Nord

darren@c.im

@Stark9837 @fediversenews @jupiter_rowland @crafti @steve @aswath
Not really similar, but interesting nonetheless:
Twtxt