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In the ActivityPub context I meant decentralized and interconnected on server level, same as email. RSS is connected only to the single webserver.

by Hitton 7y ago

jerf 7y ago
I still don't understand. RSS may be sourced from a single server, but it is, like I said, also generally being run from the same entity that is sourcing the content going into the RSS feed. Some sort of additional "decentralization" would be bad. RSS and the content it is syndicating being connected is a good thing overall; AIUI Mastadon ultimately advertises very similar types of control over data in terms of random entities not schlepping whatever data they like around under whatever pretenses they like. (RSS of course has no fine-grain controls, partially by design, partially because no other design was possible at the time.) Let me put it this way: Being specific, how is my RSS feed at http://jerf.org/iri/rss.xml http://jerf.org/iri/rss.xml particularly "centralized"? I mean, yes, I'm the one serving it, but that's what I want, just like my email comes in to a server under my control by my choice. There's no central service, no central registry I had to register that with, no central consumer, no central authority to tell me they won't carry it or that it's going to censor me.
- Kye 7y ago
  >> 'I still don't understand. RSS may be sourced from a single server, but it is, like I said, also generally being run from the same entity that is sourcing the content going into the RSS feed. Some sort of additional "decentralization" would be bad.' Some of these hot new podcast startups are trying to do exactly this. Ben Thompson of Stratechery/Exponent talks about this often: he refuses to add his podcast to Google or Spotify because they control the relationship between audience and podcaster. Apple, for example, only provides discovery for podcast RSS feeds and hasn't tried to take control (yet).

In the ActivityPub context I meant decentralized and interconnected on server level, same as email. RSS is connected only to the single webserver.

by Hitton 7y ago

In the ActivityPub context I meant decentralized and interconnected on server level, same as email. RSS is connected only to the single webserver.

jerf 7y ago

I still don't understand. RSS may be sourced from a single server, but it is, like I said, also generally being run from the same entity that is sourcing the content going into the RSS feed. Some sort of additional "decentralization" would be bad. RSS and the content it is syndicating being connected is a good thing overall; AIUI Mastadon ultimately advertises very similar types of control over data in terms of random entities not schlepping whatever data they like around under whatever pretenses they like. (RSS of course has no fine-grain controls, partially by design, partially because no other design was possible at the time.) Let me put it this way: Being specific, how is my RSS feed at http://jerf.org/iri/rss.xml http://jerf.org/iri/rss.xml particularly "centralized"? I mean, yes, I'm the one serving it, but that's what I want, just like my email comes in to a server under my control by my choice. There's no central service, no central registry I had to register that with, no central consumer, no central authority to tell me they won't carry it or that it's going to censor me.

Kye 7y ago
>> 'I still don't understand. RSS may be sourced from a single server, but it is, like I said, also generally being run from the same entity that is sourcing the content going into the RSS feed. Some sort of additional "decentralization" would be bad.' Some of these hot new podcast startups are trying to do exactly this. Ben Thompson of Stratechery/Exponent talks about this often: he refuses to add his podcast to Google or Spotify because they control the relationship between audience and podcaster. Apple, for example, only provides discovery for podcast RSS feeds and hasn't tried to take control (yet).