5 ms·

The tech and applications have existed for a while now, but adoption hasn't been comparable to large, centralized rivals. I'd argue activityPub isn't the futur

The tech and applications have existed for a while now, but adoption hasn't been comparable to large, centralized rivals. I'd argue activityPub isn't the future, until it root causes the reason for anemic adoption. Also, the best use case might not be in transferring an existing centralized app onto activity pub

amelius 8y ago
What if there was a well-maintained library that continuously scrapes a given user's Facebook account, and publishes it to AP?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  How about browser extensions?
- dane-pgp 8y ago
  Or we could go one better and use the GDPR's "data portability" requirement to force Facebook to effectively offer such an API: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ A regulator / court would have to look at what is "technically feasible" for Facebook to implement, but given that there are multiple interoperating projects supporting ActivityPub (with much smaller resources than Facebook) I think it would be hard to argue that Facebook couldn't add ActivityPub support. At a stretch, Facebook might argue that data portability only requires them (as data controllers) to publish your Facebook posts to specific accounts on other services, and doesn't require Facebook to accept inbound posts from competing platforms, but I don't know whether Facebook would want to be in a situation where their competitors have access to data on Facebook but Facebook doesn't have similar access to data from their users.
  - amelius 8y ago
    To be honest, the only data I would want to export out of Facebook would be "events" (event name, time, location, description, rsvps, image/video data, comments). Would that also be possible using the GDPR directive?
    - dane-pgp 8y ago
      The relevant term of Article 20 of the directive seems to be "personal data", which means information relating to a person (thus being broader than the idea of "personally identifiable information"). If you ran the Facebook page for a club or society, then much of the metadata about the events you created for it would likely not be covered by the GDPR; but for a personal Facebook page, if you were publishing information about an event that you were organising and were planning to attend, it is more likely that a useful amount of metadata would be covered. I don't know whether ActivityPub has a standardised way of handling event invitations and RSVPs, but the existence of things like the iCalendar format and its various implementations might go some way towards making the "technically feasible" argument.
- mankash666 8y ago
  The first question to answer is WHY user adoption remains anemic. Once there's an understanding of the cause, solution proposals make sense.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Well, to start, why would users want to move over away from the platforms they already are on? What benefits for them are there on these other platforms? And, what kind of marketing/outreach has been done to let them know about them?
  - corobo 8y ago
    Same as every other social network. Nobody I know is on there I think I can name a single person I would follow who is on Mastodon, honestly can't think of a #2
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  That's not going to be very worthwhile unless that person is also interacting via AP. If the person is not interacting, then the followers would lose interest, and it becomes just a read-only account rather than the interactivity that most of us have been wanting.

amelius 8y ago

What if there was a well-maintained library that continuously scrapes a given user's Facebook account, and publishes it to AP?

stcredzero 8y ago
How about browser extensions?
dane-pgp 8y ago
Or we could go one better and use the GDPR's "data portability" requirement to force Facebook to effectively offer such an API: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ A regulator / court would have to look at what is "technically feasible" for Facebook to implement, but given that there are multiple interoperating projects supporting ActivityPub (with much smaller resources than Facebook) I think it would be hard to argue that Facebook couldn't add ActivityPub support. At a stretch, Facebook might argue that data portability only requires them (as data controllers) to publish your Facebook posts to specific accounts on other services, and doesn't require Facebook to accept inbound posts from competing platforms, but I don't know whether Facebook would want to be in a situation where their competitors have access to data on Facebook but Facebook doesn't have similar access to data from their users.
- amelius 8y ago
  To be honest, the only data I would want to export out of Facebook would be "events" (event name, time, location, description, rsvps, image/video data, comments). Would that also be possible using the GDPR directive?
  - dane-pgp 8y ago
    The relevant term of Article 20 of the directive seems to be "personal data", which means information relating to a person (thus being broader than the idea of "personally identifiable information"). If you ran the Facebook page for a club or society, then much of the metadata about the events you created for it would likely not be covered by the GDPR; but for a personal Facebook page, if you were publishing information about an event that you were organising and were planning to attend, it is more likely that a useful amount of metadata would be covered. I don't know whether ActivityPub has a standardised way of handling event invitations and RSVPs, but the existence of things like the iCalendar format and its various implementations might go some way towards making the "technically feasible" argument.
mankash666 8y ago
The first question to answer is WHY user adoption remains anemic. Once there's an understanding of the cause, solution proposals make sense.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Well, to start, why would users want to move over away from the platforms they already are on? What benefits for them are there on these other platforms? And, what kind of marketing/outreach has been done to let them know about them?
- corobo 8y ago
  Same as every other social network. Nobody I know is on there I think I can name a single person I would follow who is on Mastodon, honestly can't think of a #2
s73v3r_ 8y ago
That's not going to be very worthwhile unless that person is also interacting via AP. If the person is not interacting, then the followers would lose interest, and it becomes just a read-only account rather than the interactivity that most of us have been wanting.