this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Fediverse

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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

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[–] gytis@fedi.lt 50 points 1 year 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?

[–] harcesz@szmer.info 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] DavidGarcia@feddit.nl 4 points 1 year 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.

[–] harcesz@szmer.info 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] bhaugen@social.coop 20 points 1 year 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.

[–] jrefior@hachyderm.io 8 points 1 year 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

[–] Feyter@programming.dev 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] hybridhavoc@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year 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.

[–] lori@cambrian.social 8 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

[–] hybridhavoc@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year 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.

[–] Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] leonidas@sunbeam.city 1 points 1 year 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

@ajsadauskas @fediverse

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

[–] skribe@aus.social 4 points 1 year ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse why would we trust them?

[–] Mikal@sfba.social 3 points 1 year 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.

[–] CyberTailor@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Hubzilla will support it for sure

[–] sabreW4K3@lemmy.tf 3 points 1 year ago

Let's have this conversation once BlueSky is actually open

[–] hybridhavoc@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] geoma@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year 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.

[–] hybridhavoc@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year 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.

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)

[–] kherge@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] ram@bookwormstory.social 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] timrichards@aus.social 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] tess@mastodon.social 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] tess@mastodon.social 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] renwillis@mstdn.social 1 points 1 year ago

@ajsadauskas @maegul @fediverse I’ll be honest. I’m ambivalent about Bluesky. If Mastodon et al can talk to them, fine. If not, fine. I’m happy & content with the wonderful people here and if federation gives us access to a few more, that’s fine too.

[–] weyoun6@kolektiva.social 1 points 1 year ago

@ajsadauskas @fediverse

Mo' protocols mo' problems.

What does the AT protocol offer software already using ActivityPub?

[–] NadiaPurge@musician.social -2 points 1 year 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?