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I really hope that activitypub and the federated web end up becoming the technologies that "win" out of all the nonsense that is "Web3", but the wildly successf

I really hope that activitypub and the federated web end up becoming the technologies that "win" out of all the nonsense that is "Web3", but the wildly successful monetization of traditional web platforms and the "different-but-more" monetization of the crypto-obsessed vision of Web3 are nearly impossible for platforms like Peertube and Mastodon to effectively win out against.

gue-ni 5y ago
This has nothing to do with Web3
- Jiejeing 5y ago
  Indeed, as it is an open solution and a working product.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    And actually “web”.
indigochill 5y ago
I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't. I also think federation has the Google conditioning of the mainstream working against it. The mainstream's been conditioned to think of the internet in terms of global platforms. Switching to interacting with smaller nodes is a paradigm shift that I don't believe most users are willing to make, especially given the benefits (like use of personal data and human-scale moderation) don't seem to matter to the majority given the apathy towards Facebook's and Google's business practices. That said, much like gopher still exists in parallel with HTTP, IMO it doesn't really matter which wins because the mainstream using one is not mutually exclusive with some of us using the other.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  > I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't. Blockchain has already “won”: it's now a mainstream investment item, with investment firms bullish. But it also completely failed its goal of decentralization (almost every token holder uses a centralized exchange) and also isn't a competitor to the web at all: you can't connect to a blockchain with a web browser, and every “totally-not-web”3 platform out there is in fact built on top of the Web.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    It's not too late for the bubble to burst. When investors realize they put millions of dollars into a system which can process under 100 requests per second they may have a stroke and the whole thing could collapse like the .net bubble burst in the 90s and took away much of the landscape with it.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      The issue is that the entire financial market is a bubble now, not only crypto, but stocks, credit (mortgage, student loans, all private debt really), real estate, etc. And as we've seen with the 2008 crisis response and the coronavirus response, politics in the Western World (that is: not China) are willing to do as much they can to keep this bubble from exploding. And as we've seen from how Japan dealt with the Asian Crisis, you can pretty much keep such a bubble alive forever (despite Japan being crippled by its demographic decline). Maybe not forever forever mind you, but my point is that if/when it collapses it's likely to collapse when the entire financial system does (and, as much as I hate the current state of affairs, I don't think there will a positive outcome if it happened). Edit: just to be clear, I wish this stack of turd would disappear, but I don't believe it.
      - southerntofu 5y ago
waffle_maniac 5y ago
Having a stake in a protocol incentivizes adoption and rewards network participation. The average person doesn’t buy stocks. This is a way for them to not be left behind by the elites.
melony 5y ago
Almost every production ready activitypub and federated web framework is under hard copyleft. There is not a single company who will use the technology (unless you are being boycotted by the fediverse like Gab). The fediverse creators explicitly made themselves hostile to innovation. You can't expect to be as popular as WordPress when you demand every user to open source their entire stack.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  It's not every end-user, it's every operator. And that's a good thing: it creates a positive feedback loop where i'm incited to share my patches because others are too. I'm not going to be at a disadvantage sharing code/ideas, because it's the standard within that community and it will benefit everyone equally. Copyleft is is not hostile to innovation, it's the only sustainable path to innovation and was the standard way of developing arts/sciences for millennia before the copyright industry was born and fucked up everything.
armchairhacker 5y ago
I don't think that these p2p technologies are going to win out. They're just objectively inferior to centralized services except in rare cases. But the fact that they're being maintained, and probably will be maintained in the future, is really good. In the event of a serious war or disaster, even locally, they could really come in handy.
jiggunjer 5y ago
I dunno, seems full p2p is going to compete with federation. The former has more technical problems to solve but avoids provider lock-in.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  There is nothing inherent about federation requiring provider lock-in. HTTP has redirect codes, XMPP has <Moved> stanzas, and even better the ZoT protocol (as used in Hubzilla) has crypto-identity over federated services so you can move by simply signing a new identity file mentioning new servers.
elsjaako 5y ago
I doubt they'll ever truly win, but they already work. You don't need to be as big as twitter to be a successful social media platform. I already use mastodon. Not in a "someone needs to be first" sense, but just as a platform I like. Peertube doesn't have the content to be there yet, and the model is a bit more difficult (as hosting video is just more expensive than hosting small bits of text and pictures, even with p2p features). There is some good content on there, but (for me) not enough to make it a social platform like YouTube. Also content discovery still isn't there yet. I recommend fedivideos@mas.to as a good resource to find some nice things.

gue-ni 5y ago

This has nothing to do with Web3

Jiejeing 5y ago
Indeed, as it is an open solution and a working product.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  And actually “web”.

indigochill 5y ago

I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't. I also think federation has the Google conditioning of the mainstream working against it. The mainstream's been conditioned to think of the internet in terms of global platforms. Switching to interacting with smaller nodes is a paradigm shift that I don't believe most users are willing to make, especially given the benefits (like use of personal data and human-scale moderation) don't seem to matter to the majority given the apathy towards Facebook's and Google's business practices. That said, much like gopher still exists in parallel with HTTP, IMO it doesn't really matter which wins because the mainstream using one is not mutually exclusive with some of us using the other.

littlestymaar 5y ago
> I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't. Blockchain has already “won”: it's now a mainstream investment item, with investment firms bullish. But it also completely failed its goal of decentralization (almost every token holder uses a centralized exchange) and also isn't a competitor to the web at all: you can't connect to a blockchain with a web browser, and every “totally-not-web”3 platform out there is in fact built on top of the Web.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  It's not too late for the bubble to burst. When investors realize they put millions of dollars into a system which can process under 100 requests per second they may have a stroke and the whole thing could collapse like the .net bubble burst in the 90s and took away much of the landscape with it.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    The issue is that the entire financial market is a bubble now, not only crypto, but stocks, credit (mortgage, student loans, all private debt really), real estate, etc. And as we've seen with the 2008 crisis response and the coronavirus response, politics in the Western World (that is: not China) are willing to do as much they can to keep this bubble from exploding. And as we've seen from how Japan dealt with the Asian Crisis, you can pretty much keep such a bubble alive forever (despite Japan being crippled by its demographic decline). Maybe not forever forever mind you, but my point is that if/when it collapses it's likely to collapse when the entire financial system does (and, as much as I hate the current state of affairs, I don't think there will a positive outcome if it happened). Edit: just to be clear, I wish this stack of turd would disappear, but I don't believe it.
    - southerntofu 5y ago

waffle_maniac 5y ago

Having a stake in a protocol incentivizes adoption and rewards network participation. The average person doesn’t buy stocks. This is a way for them to not be left behind by the elites.

melony 5y ago

Almost every production ready activitypub and federated web framework is under hard copyleft. There is not a single company who will use the technology (unless you are being boycotted by the fediverse like Gab). The fediverse creators explicitly made themselves hostile to innovation. You can't expect to be as popular as WordPress when you demand every user to open source their entire stack.

southerntofu 5y ago
It's not every end-user, it's every operator. And that's a good thing: it creates a positive feedback loop where i'm incited to share my patches because others are too. I'm not going to be at a disadvantage sharing code/ideas, because it's the standard within that community and it will benefit everyone equally. Copyleft is is not hostile to innovation, it's the only sustainable path to innovation and was the standard way of developing arts/sciences for millennia before the copyright industry was born and fucked up everything.

armchairhacker 5y ago

I don't think that these p2p technologies are going to win out. They're just objectively inferior to centralized services except in rare cases. But the fact that they're being maintained, and probably will be maintained in the future, is really good. In the event of a serious war or disaster, even locally, they could really come in handy.

jiggunjer 5y ago

I dunno, seems full p2p is going to compete with federation. The former has more technical problems to solve but avoids provider lock-in.

southerntofu 5y ago
There is nothing inherent about federation requiring provider lock-in. HTTP has redirect codes, XMPP has <Moved> stanzas, and even better the ZoT protocol (as used in Hubzilla) has crypto-identity over federated services so you can move by simply signing a new identity file mentioning new servers.

elsjaako 5y ago

I doubt they'll ever truly win, but they already work. You don't need to be as big as twitter to be a successful social media platform. I already use mastodon. Not in a "someone needs to be first" sense, but just as a platform I like. Peertube doesn't have the content to be there yet, and the model is a bit more difficult (as hosting video is just more expensive than hosting small bits of text and pictures, even with p2p features). There is some good content on there, but (for me) not enough to make it a social platform like YouTube. Also content discovery still isn't there yet. I recommend fedivideos@mas.to as a good resource to find some nice things.