4 ms·

Sure, Mastodon doesn't implement the full ActivityPub spec [0]. They're still very much behind the effort though, it seems [1] (or at least they were in 2018).

Sure, Mastodon doesn't implement the full ActivityPub spec [0]. They're still very much behind the effort though, it seems [1] (or at least they were in 2018). I'm not a Mastodon developer, nor have I developed with it, but surely there are learnings there that could potentially be contributed back to the W3C to make ActivityPub better (including making it more rigorously spec'd). The people at the W3C are not gods - they're human beings just like the rest of us. Why not get involved in the conversation there? The only genuine reason I can think of to split away from the ActivityPub effort to build a completely different protocol would be if the W3C's working group on ActivityPub is filled with such toxic politics that it's impossible to make any progress on making the spec better. (That's been the only reason I could see in the past when I've been part of protocol standardization efforts). Without evidence of that, however, I'd say that it's far better for the community to get involved in making the existing spec better. Robust debate (supported by evidence, such as that which Mastodon's built up) is incredibly valuable to the community as a whole. Also, it's incredibly valuable from a political decentralization perspective to have as neutral a party as possible facilitating the standardization efforts, to minimize the risk of Big Tech shaping standards in ways that would suit them financially (and potentially against the interests of the average internet user). [0] - https://activitypub.rocks/implementation-report/ https://activitypub.rocks/implementation-report/ [1] - https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is-the-future/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is-the...

kick 7y ago
Sure, Mastodon doesn't implement the full ActivityPub spec [0]. They're still very much behind the effort though, it seems [1] (or at least they were in 2018). Not only this, but they go against it in multiple places. How they've implemented 'summary' and the bizarre things they've done to create compatibility with Misskey (but not in an actually-compatible way, Misskey's had to patch their own solution every time) has made every implementation have to implement an against-spec trashfire. I'm not a Mastodon developer, nor have I developed with it, but surely there are learnings there that could potentially be contributed back to the W3C to make ActivityPub better (including making it more rigorously spec'd). Alternatively, the AP spec is fundamentally broken in many ways, and that effort would be better off going into a protocol like Secure Scuttlebutt (not a fan, but it's much better than AP) or Diaspora (also not a fan, but it's much better than AP). The people at the W3C are not gods - they're human beings just like the rest of us. Why not get involved in the conversation there? The only genuine reason I can think of to split away from the ActivityPub effort to build a completely different protocol would be if the W3C's working group on ActivityPub is filled with such toxic politics that it's impossible to make any progress on making the spec better. (That's been the only reason I could see in the past when I've been part of protocol standardization efforts). Not only politics, but it's incredibly slow. Webber has written a post on how troublesome the standardization process was, though he doesn't go into just how bad it was: https://dustycloud.org/blog/on-standards-divisions-collaboration/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/on-standards-divisions-collabora... Without evidence of that, however, I'd say that it's far better for the community to get involved in making the existing spec better. Robust debate (supported by evidence, such as that which Mastodon's built up) is incredibly valuable to the community as a whole. There are already existing specifications, none of them as bad as ActivityPub. I'm fully for going in one of those directions, but AP is more or less a failed experiment. Also, it's incredibly valuable from a political decentralization perspective to have as neutral a party as possible facilitating the standardization efforts, to minimize the risk of Big Tech shaping standards in ways that would suit them financially (and potentially against the interests of the average internet user). W3C is not neutral, and not only are they not neutral, but the RIAA and MPAA are people with enough sway to have messed up the entire web multiple times (see: making EME a standard). A neutral party sounds great! The W3C should not get to be involved, however.
- ChristianBundy 7y ago
  > Secure Scuttlebutt (not a fan, but it's much better than AP) If you have any specific feedback about which improvements are most important to you, I'd love to hear it. It's hard to see things with fresh eyes after you've been working on them for a bit.
  - lucideer 7y ago
    Not op but would like to comment on this: SSB is great; I'm not sure if others would agree, but while I think it has a lot of problems, none seem inherent (i.e. while they mightn't necessarily be easy to fix, they wouldn't involve any major architectural overhauls or scratch rethinks; what's there is conceptually sound). The main issue for me is performance and resource usage, which is tricky since a lot of the traditional solutions to perf/resource challenges are cloud-based, which would erode ssb's value. Thinking about SSB on older recycled or embedded systems, etc. is hard. The other is NIH; this is definitely something I feel the community is acutely aware of however; I recall seeing discussions of parallel implementations in Kafka, etc. years ago. I haven't kept up with recent development though.
    - ChristianBundy 7y ago
      The performance problem is hard, but we have lots of active experiments that I'm optimistic about. Implementations in Golang and Rust, a handful of great database experiments (even simple stuff like Sqlite), and a bunch of people who are actively using SSB on low-resource devices daily. The Manyverse app in particular runs on Android devices, which are going to be very resource-constrained when compared to most computers. The NIH problem is hard, but I think we're moving in the right direction.
  - kick 7y ago
    I actually think that the SSBC has done a fantastic job with it: the work that's been done is really impressive. I'm mostly just not a fan of the ground it's built on; the implementation itself is amazing, and the protocol is solid. I wish you good luck with it! And to anyone unfamiliar, I recommend checking out the "Principles" section of the handbook; there's a lot of interesting stuff in it, and it proves that Scuttlebutt's really got the best culture/morality of any distributed network so far: https://handbook.scuttlebutt.nz/principles/ https://handbook.scuttlebutt.nz/principles/

kick 7y ago

Sure, Mastodon doesn't implement the full ActivityPub spec [0]. They're still very much behind the effort though, it seems [1] (or at least they were in 2018). Not only this, but they go against it in multiple places. How they've implemented 'summary' and the bizarre things they've done to create compatibility with Misskey (but not in an actually-compatible way, Misskey's had to patch their own solution every time) has made every implementation have to implement an against-spec trashfire. I'm not a Mastodon developer, nor have I developed with it, but surely there are learnings there that could potentially be contributed back to the W3C to make ActivityPub better (including making it more rigorously spec'd). Alternatively, the AP spec is fundamentally broken in many ways, and that effort would be better off going into a protocol like Secure Scuttlebutt (not a fan, but it's much better than AP) or Diaspora (also not a fan, but it's much better than AP). The people at the W3C are not gods - they're human beings just like the rest of us. Why not get involved in the conversation there? The only genuine reason I can think of to split away from the ActivityPub effort to build a completely different protocol would be if the W3C's working group on ActivityPub is filled with such toxic politics that it's impossible to make any progress on making the spec better. (That's been the only reason I could see in the past when I've been part of protocol standardization efforts). Not only politics, but it's incredibly slow. Webber has written a post on how troublesome the standardization process was, though he doesn't go into just how bad it was: https://dustycloud.org/blog/on-standards-divisions-collaboration/ https://dustycloud.org/blog/on-standards-divisions-collabora... Without evidence of that, however, I'd say that it's far better for the community to get involved in making the existing spec better. Robust debate (supported by evidence, such as that which Mastodon's built up) is incredibly valuable to the community as a whole. There are already existing specifications, none of them as bad as ActivityPub. I'm fully for going in one of those directions, but AP is more or less a failed experiment. Also, it's incredibly valuable from a political decentralization perspective to have as neutral a party as possible facilitating the standardization efforts, to minimize the risk of Big Tech shaping standards in ways that would suit them financially (and potentially against the interests of the average internet user). W3C is not neutral, and not only are they not neutral, but the RIAA and MPAA are people with enough sway to have messed up the entire web multiple times (see: making EME a standard). A neutral party sounds great! The W3C should not get to be involved, however.

ChristianBundy 7y ago
> Secure Scuttlebutt (not a fan, but it's much better than AP) If you have any specific feedback about which improvements are most important to you, I'd love to hear it. It's hard to see things with fresh eyes after you've been working on them for a bit.
- lucideer 7y ago
  Not op but would like to comment on this: SSB is great; I'm not sure if others would agree, but while I think it has a lot of problems, none seem inherent (i.e. while they mightn't necessarily be easy to fix, they wouldn't involve any major architectural overhauls or scratch rethinks; what's there is conceptually sound). The main issue for me is performance and resource usage, which is tricky since a lot of the traditional solutions to perf/resource challenges are cloud-based, which would erode ssb's value. Thinking about SSB on older recycled or embedded systems, etc. is hard. The other is NIH; this is definitely something I feel the community is acutely aware of however; I recall seeing discussions of parallel implementations in Kafka, etc. years ago. I haven't kept up with recent development though.
  - ChristianBundy 7y ago
    The performance problem is hard, but we have lots of active experiments that I'm optimistic about. Implementations in Golang and Rust, a handful of great database experiments (even simple stuff like Sqlite), and a bunch of people who are actively using SSB on low-resource devices daily. The Manyverse app in particular runs on Android devices, which are going to be very resource-constrained when compared to most computers. The NIH problem is hard, but I think we're moving in the right direction.
- kick 7y ago
  I actually think that the SSBC has done a fantastic job with it: the work that's been done is really impressive. I'm mostly just not a fan of the ground it's built on; the implementation itself is amazing, and the protocol is solid. I wish you good luck with it! And to anyone unfamiliar, I recommend checking out the "Principles" section of the handbook; there's a lot of interesting stuff in it, and it proves that Scuttlebutt's really got the best culture/morality of any distributed network so far: https://handbook.scuttlebutt.nz/principles/ https://handbook.scuttlebutt.nz/principles/