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I really like the idea of a social web standard. This seems like a very constricting protocol, though: the one-to-one correspondence between a user and a serve

by j4pe 9y ago

I really like the idea of a social web standard. This seems like a very constricting protocol, though: the one-to-one correspondence between a user and a server means I need to individually post my activity to the "inbox" of everyone who wants to read it (or they poll my "outbox" - I'm not sure). Not a recipe for an efficient system. It's called ActivityPub, so this was clearly a design decision to meet the goal of being decentralized. But I probably wouldn't implement this standard in a project unless I modified it a bit so that many clients could share a server.

Jaruzel 9y ago
There's JSON examples that include following/followers lists. I'm guessing that you could POST to that list, and the backend server takes care of forwarding it on to your followers.
paroneayea 9y ago
There's a public delivery mechanism where if many people are on the same server, and its a public post (eg Twitter style messages, etc) it can be delivered to a shared public inbox https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#public-inbox-delivery https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#public-inbox-delivery That way the receiving server can only get POST'ed to once and distribute to the appropriate followers. Of course, for more limited distribution posts, you still have to distribute individually, but that's no different than how email works.
epeus 9y ago
Have a look at the related w3c spec WebSub that is designed to deal with this issue: https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/
- detaro 9y ago
  Which many may know as Pubsubhubbub, with only minor changes and a new name. (Which is a good thing: no need to make up a new protocol if there is already one in the wild that works)
- clacke2 9y ago
  WebSub literally does the same thing, except ActivityPub cuts away the middle layers, removing some redundancy on the way. It makes ActivityPub less of a protocol hodge-podge than OStatus, which has the same drawbacks and benefits as any introduction of a dependency into a protocol or software.

by j4pe 9y ago

Jaruzel 9y ago

There's JSON examples that include following/followers lists. I'm guessing that you could POST to that list, and the backend server takes care of forwarding it on to your followers.

paroneayea 9y ago

There's a public delivery mechanism where if many people are on the same server, and its a public post (eg Twitter style messages, etc) it can be delivered to a shared public inbox https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#public-inbox-delivery https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#public-inbox-delivery That way the receiving server can only get POST'ed to once and distribute to the appropriate followers. Of course, for more limited distribution posts, you still have to distribute individually, but that's no different than how email works.

epeus 9y ago

Have a look at the related w3c spec WebSub that is designed to deal with this issue: https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/

detaro 9y ago
Which many may know as Pubsubhubbub, with only minor changes and a new name. (Which is a good thing: no need to make up a new protocol if there is already one in the wild that works)
clacke2 9y ago
WebSub literally does the same thing, except ActivityPub cuts away the middle layers, removing some redundancy on the way. It makes ActivityPub less of a protocol hodge-podge than OStatus, which has the same drawbacks and benefits as any introduction of a dependency into a protocol or software.