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What is ActivityPub, and how will it change the internet?
- superfrank 8y agoI'm getting an "Error establishing a database connection" page
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jdormit 8y agoHaha, didn't expect my blog to ever get to the front page of HN and my $5/month DO droplet couldn't keep up. I resized it and now I'm putting Cloudflare in front of it, so hopefully it will stay up now.
- joshstrange 8y agoYou might want to look into caching (either at the wordpress or nginx level). I have a $5 DO and it can handle a good bit of traffic before being hugged to death. Now I do use Ghost as my blogging platform but I haven't enabled anything special in ghost for caching, I did it all in nginx.
- jdormit 8y agoThanks! Yeah, I haven't looked into any sort of performance optimizations. Better late than never, I suppose.
- jdormit 8y agoSeems to be doing okay now :fingerscrossed:. For those who don't want to bother with a long loading time, or if the site goes down again, here's the article as a gist: https://gist.github.com/jdormit/7df2a0518347c24d759a79d62304d16d https://gist.github.com/jdormit/7df2a0518347c24d759a79d62304...
- dddw 8y agothanks for the very conving article! I've been a facebook and twitter sceptic for some time, but didn't realise it's successors are here!
- stephengillie 8y agoThe site is currently inaccessible, possibly due to being "hugged to death". Would ActivityPub be able to solve this issue?
- canhascodez 8y agoThat's probably a better term, but I kinda miss when that was known as "slashdotting" or the "Slashdot Effect".
- bjoli 8y agoI will never call it anything else. Now will you and any Anonymous Coward reading this get off my lawn. Or maybe install NetBSD on it.
- NoGravitas 8y agoOr petrify it and cover it with hot grits.
- subroutine 8y agoIf the site is down, there's also... Could activity pub be the future [1]? Yes, it could be [2]. [1] https://blog.digitalscofflaw.com/articles/activitypub-could-be-the-future/ https://blog.digitalscofflaw.com/articles/activitypub-could-... [2] https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is-the-future/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is-the...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gizzlon 8y agoSo.. I like this direction, but haven't the "decentralized social network" been tried a few times already? What different this time?
- jdormit 8y agoTo be honest, the main difference is that the public is getting slightly more disillusioned with centralized social media. Mastodon (an ActivityPub-compliant Twitter clone) has gotten a huge influx of new users in recent months due to a bunch of PR missteps by Twitter. I will admit that the post was intentionally hyperbolic, though. AP doesn't have nearly the adoption threshold it would need to be a serious contender in the social media space. I'm hoping that through articles like these we can spread the word and drive adoption. But yeah, this has been tried before and didn't really take off. I think the fundamental problem is that it's just way more lucrative to have a centralized social network than a decentralized/federated one. But as I alluded in the post, I think there is a way to build a profitable business on ActivityPub, and that's what it's going to take to make AP mainstream.
- riffic 8y agoActivityPub is a W3C recommendation[1], which is further along in maturity than previous open protocols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium#Specification_maturation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium#Spec...
- dragontamer 8y ago> So.. I like this direction, but haven't the "decentralized social network" been tried a few times already? What different this time? It seems to be all an evolution. Gnu Social -> OStatus -> ActivityPub -> PeerTube. As all things open source, every few years, a new innovation builds on top of already established communities and tries something new. True, ActivityPub / Masteodon are relatively new, but the roots of the network are well planted in the general Fediverse.
- jdormit 8y agoPeerTube is actually built with ActivityPub ;)
- amelius 8y agoThey list a whole bunch of services built on top of AP, except for events. Please give me decentralized events (including the rsvp option), and I might be able to leave Facebook.
- ChristianBundy 8y agoNot ActivityPub, but this has been implemented in with Scuttlebutt[0] with availability polls to decide when to schedule an event, RSVP options, and it's all done completely P2P with no "instances" required to act as central servers. [0]: http://scuttlebutt.nz/ http://scuttlebutt.nz/
- Vendan 8y agoScuttlebutt has a lot of work to do before I'll consider it as even approaching usable, mostly to do with the protocol layer. It works great for very small (<1000 member) communities, but it scales extremely poorly, and the protocols are poorly designed and cumbersome to work with.
- elcomet 8y agoAlso, the name is pretty terrible. I'd never dare say to my friends "join me on scuttlebutt"
- ChristianBundy 8y agoCould you point out why you think it scales poorly? I've never heard those complaints, and my laptop benchmarks 100,000 basic messages in only a few seconds. Even so, you only replicate friends of friends, which for me is about 2500 people. I'd appreciate your input, thanks!
- Vendan 8y agoSo the protocol issues are not to do with the scaling, but with the fact that the choice was made, early on, to support node.js as the primary implementation language, and little thought was put into the protocols from that point on. It's nearly impossible to implement in anything other then node.js at this point. I suppose I am a little off in my <1000 estimate, but 2500 is still hilariously small compared to the internet as a whole. Try it with 400 thousand users and 20 million messages (which activitypub type stuff can handle)
- mikedilger 8y agoWhat could help Mastodon grow significantly is if the moderation on a large number of instances was toned down a bit. What happened to Wil Wheaton was a bit nuts. And conservative opinions are often banned due to being agressively labelled as hate or racist when they are usually not technically so. Most people don't want to be part of a social justice warrior authoritarian "fall in line or we will ban you" community. Sure, people could set up their own instance. Federation is awesome. But if almost all other instances don't talk to them, they have to build a community from scratch, and it's usually not worth it.
- jklinger410 8y agoFor those who were unaware what happened to Wil (http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right-now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/ http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-...)
- zeth___ 8y agoThis is the best example of live by the sword die by the sword [0]. Pay for play is a huge issue in journalism, that he was mocking poor white guys with an interest in gaming is very dickish. Gaming is by far the largest cultural industry [1], more important than Hollywood. I'm more worried about the billionaires buying failing old newspapers and using them to spout whatever ideology gives them the lowest taxes, but that doesn't mean I can't see why someone might care about their hobby being sold out. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/842413-gamergate https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/842413-gamergate [1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-01-31-games-industry-generated-usd108-4bn-in-revenues-in-2017 https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-01-31-games-indu...
- pathseeker 8y agoIt's honestly not surprising that someone so divisive in the start of the post (twitter being right-wing, "Shitler", etc) would attract a lot of problems. The guy is clearly a political troll so he's going to be poison to any community he joins where he posts like that.
- ipsocannibal 8y agoI'm wondering how decentralized systems based around ActivityPub plan to combat problems like spam and astroturfing? These seem to be easier to address in the walled garden platforms due to the administrators having a global view of the social networks. Decentralization on the surface seems to allow bad actors to more easily mask their activities from effective moderation.
- csuwldcat 8y agoAlso take a look at DIF's Identity Hub - a large-scale initiative that goes far beyond a social server/mailbox, and incorporates solutions for the identity issues people here have flagged: https://github.com/decentralized-identity/identity-hub/blob/master/explainer.md https://github.com/decentralized-identity/identity-hub/blob/...
- edhelas 8y agoIt can maybe change the Web, but not the Internet, and only a portion of it :) ActivityPub is based on HTTP/JSON standards, for real-time solutions in other "out of Web" environments I'd prefer to use something like XMPP-Pubsub (that is built on top of TCP) directly. XMPP can pretty much covers what ActivityPub offers (feeds, comments, articles publication) with a lot more related features (presences, contact list, video-conferencing, chatrooms…). Also, social features on XMPP are basically Atom 1.0 on top of Pubsub, so no need to convert Atom to some new JSON format, you simply embed it! (ArsTechnica on XMPP Pubsub https://nl.movim.eu/?node/news.movim.eu/ArsTechnica https://nl.movim.eu/?node/news.movim.eu/ArsTechnica, or my personnal blog https://nl.movim.eu/?blog/edhelas@movim.eu https://nl.movim.eu/?blog/edhelas@movim.eu).
- elcomet 8y agoYou have to let it go, and accept that XMPP is dead.. And help spread technologies that have a real chance
- drb91 8y agoI don’t think XMPP has a concept of standard federated authentication, let alone social media controls you might expect. It seems like a subset of the required functionality.
- MattJ100 8y agoXMPP federation certainly is authenticated, so that your identity to other servers on the network is never in doubt. As for social media controls, you certainly can publish items only visible to e.g. certain groups of people, unsure if that's what you meant. XMPP is not the narrow subset of XMPP that Pidgin implements, but sadly that's how most people are familiar with it. Projects like Movim for example provide a much richer view of how XMPP can also be used for social media. Personally I'm a fan of ActivityPub if it gets more people federating. It's not impossible to bridge the two protocols (we did that in the past with OStatus, the previous iteration of federated HTTP social networking).
- zeth___ 8y agoEvery community I know that's been started for the goal of 'protecting' some group has ended up as the most toxic tarpit imaginable. Mastodon seems to be headed in the same direction. Tone down the rhetoric of protecting peoples feelings and have actual human conversations instead. You will only attract the worst people from both sides of that debate if you keep it up. You just made me orders of magnitude less likely to use it because all I heard there was "prepare for lots of drama".
- whalesalad 8y agoAgree. These isolated communities just serve to divide the world more. Mastodon is treating a symptom not a root cause. It’s one solution to the problem of humans being bad to each other: avoidance rather than fighting it head on. Combine that with the product issues it has in regards to walling off people and ideas, the need to self host (so many wasted resources, not to mention the bar to running one is high), and the extremist admin issues. ActivityPub is cool. Mastodon is gonna be a flash in the pan methinks. If the protocol catches on and services like Wordpress, Twitter, FB et all begin to adopt it then the individual instances are going to be less attractive.
- hello_marmalade 8y agoThe idea that you should be able to shield or blind yourself to content is a flat out stupid one. Not to mention that the way Mastodon works kinda lends it self to the old issue of jerk forum admins. If an instance owner doesn't like what you say for any reason they boot you off. They can also share that information with other instances to block you from going to those instances as well. Sure, you could start your own or join an instance that doesn't do that kinda stuff, but then what's the point of federation? Those are really the only two issues I have with Mastodon.
- MattJ100 8y ago> Sure, you could start your own or join an instance that doesn't do that kinda stuff, but then what's the point of federation? That is exactly the point of federation. Maybe jerk admins are a real problem, maybe they aren't - but they can't boot you off the network, and you'll always have options.
- CM30 8y agoIt's like being involved in a real life hobby. Sure, one club or organisation can be jerks and kick you out for minor disagreements, but nothing stops you from joining another one or setting up your own.
- hello_marmalade 8y agoWell more specifically, what I was trying to say is, if you wanted to be part of, say - the cross-stitching community, and you made a post about how over-under stitching sucks, and so the owner of that server banned you, and then let every other cross-stitching based mastodon know about your terrible stitching beliefs, then while you can still "join" another mastodon instance, you are effectively removed completely from the "cross-stitching community". From what I'm aware of, this has kinda happened with certain instances have essentially been blackballed by the groups of instances which don't like them, or whatever.
- gnopgnip 8y agoThat is only if the entire cross stitching community chooses to remove you. The alternative is facebook, and if facebook decides to remove you it doesn't matter what the cross stitching community says, you are out
- pugworthy 8y agoJust to tone down the "yet another..." aspect of the title, I might suggest, "What is ActivityPub, and how could it help change the internet?"
- jdormit 8y agoYeah, it is kind of click-baity. Honestly, I wanted this to spread so I gave it a provocative name. And here it is on the front page of HN... I won't be offended if the mods change the title of the submission though, I realize that's the sort of thing that rubs people here the wrong way.
- skybrian 8y agoHow does ActivityPub compare with RSS and Atom? Would it make sense for blogs, podcasts, and/or news readers to add support for it?
- Vinnl 8y agoIt doesn't just allow people to subscribe to your blog, but also to respond to it with their own ActivityPub account, and have those responses show up both on your blog/podcast and on their account.
- kareldonk369 8y agoFederation doesn't actually solve the issue. What we need is everyone publishing from their own device. No need to join a federated server of any kind.
- drb91 8y agoWhat does this solve?
- kareldonk369 8y agoDeplatforming for one... If everyone can publish right from their own device, there are no middle-men. And that would be true P2P.
- dielan 8y agoIf you're one of those people reading this and thinking "oh here comes another alternative social media" just stop reading and steer clear. Mastodon is compatible with OStatus used by GNU social servers and Pleroma is basically the spiritual successor to GNU Social and is fully activitypub compliant (moreso than Mastodon is). This network has existed for a very long time and will still be there when you're ready to take alternative social media seruously. So if you're skeptical, check back when you're ready.
- d33 8y agoYou might have a point, but the way you phrased it sounded arrogant. People might have various reasons to avoid social networks or consider them irrelevant and might not need to "get ready for it". While potentially useful, it's not really a must.
- Vinnl 8y ago> No more walled gardens I somewhat doubt this, though. Already, Mastodon instances can block other instances from showing up on theirs. Likewise, a major instance could simply block all other instances from showing up on theirs, or the other way around. Walled gardens can arise when single players become as large as Twitter is, and that isn't prevented (though perhaps somewhat obstructed) by federation.
- drb91 8y agoI always interpreted a “walled garden” as a wall you don’t want, not a carte blanche critique of walls. What’s the appeal of a single massive instance over a federated set of them for end users?
- Vinnl 8y agoThe appeal could be that everyone's on there, and you can't read their posts elsewhere. It needn't start out like that, but it could become that - much like Twitter has been limiting third-party access more and more.
- drb91 8y agoWell, it could, but I see zero reason to think so. More likely is people never leave twitter or facebook in the first place.
- stevew20 8y agoSo like... RSS... But way less awesome?