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> technical ability to set up their own instance or configure the clients This will be largely alleviated with managed or hosted services. For example, a lot o

by riffic 5y ago

> technical ability to set up their own instance or configure the clients This will be largely alleviated with managed or hosted services. For example, a lot of corporations used to run mail services on-prem but no longer need to do this, they've moved on to purchasing it directly from a provider like Microsoft or Google Workspace. Also, this largely reflects the idea behind Discord and Slack - hosted services will be the dominant players once the ecosystem evolves. also, I'll repeat my new business model Twitter should adopt -- take the underlying protocol (ActivityPub), white-label their services and sell them to orgs who want Twitter on their own domain (also allowing for control over the username namespace like email / @anyusername@domain.tld). I've been pitching this idea for years and no one's ever given a serious critique of the idea. A global unified namespace like the one Twitter uses is problematic (squatting/trademark disputes, etc) and awful.

beepbooptheory 5y ago
Maybe this was the underlying goal in their efforts with Bluesky?[1] 1. https://blueskyweb.org https://blueskyweb.org
- riffic 5y ago
  probably. Fortunately Bluesky is vaporware so the Fediverse and ActivityPub actually have the advantage here of being a standard that has an established community of implementors, and momentum. EDIT: I've said before, the PBLLC should be working with the W3C, IETF, or other open bodies, and they've always had a seat at the table (https://www.w3.org/Consortium/join https://www.w3.org/Consortium/join).
  - pfraze 5y ago
    We're absolutely not vaporware. We're also completely happy to live in a world where both ActivityPub and Bluesky exist, and prioritize different problems with different approaches.
deltarholamda 5y ago
> I've been pitching this idea for years and no one's ever given a serious critique of the idea. It would dilute the Twitter brand and divide internal resources. That's the main critique I can think of. Would never happen while Twitter was a publicly traded corporation. Under private ownership, it very well might happen. I think the Fediverse idea is great, but people are dumb. @somebody is about as far as most people can handle. @somebody@domain.with.dots is confusing, and nobody will understand. Imagine having to explain bang paths to Fred in accounting so he can send an electronic mail. Never underestimate how obtuse the average computer user is. They can be taught, but it takes many, many years before it becomes common enough that people grok it without trouble. (I like your idea, btw.)
- riffic 5y ago
  fair critique and absolutely reasonable considering why they've never done it. It just seems like a more ethical business model than selling ads and data licensing (https://octodon.social/@jalefkowit/108216691483123862 https://octodon.social/@jalefkowit/108216691483123862).
- dash2 5y ago
  It's strange to argue that people are stupid because they don't want to deal with irrelevant technicalities. Are they also stupid because they prefer domain names to IP addresses?
  - deltarholamda 5y ago
    Fair enough, swap out "ignorant" if you want. The learning curve for Internety-thing is pretty steep, which is why people like "Find us on Facebook!" so much. But what I was doing was comparing Fedi @somebody@some.thing.com to old-school bang paths. It's unlikely to take off among the masses until significant time passes. Heck, even email addresses baffle enough people to make me doubt whether all of this Internet stuff was worth the trouble.
    - riffic 5y ago
      > "Find us on Facebook!" ah, the modern take on "AOL Keyword:" from the late 90s.
dotnet00 5y ago
Don't hosted services defeat the point of federation in the first place? That's how we've ended up with email being as difficult as it is to self-host. Same issue with Discord, it's a centralized service where you and your content are at the mercy of the owner of the service, which I think is one of the big things that federated alternatives (like Matrix) are meant to solve, so any single entity can't unilaterally revoke your participation in the entire network.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  I don't think so. Being able to switch what provider hosts your social media without losing your network is valuable (and has pro-social effects) without needing to self-host. > That's how we've ended up with email being as difficult as it is to self-host. I'm not sure what you mean, what's the "that", what do you think led to the situation where email is hard to self-host? Even if hard to self-host, email succeeds in avoiding vendor lock-in if you have your own domain. Which most people don't, because of cost and because _that_ can be hard to manage for a normal person. But if fediverse succeeds at giving a typical person the lack of vendor lock-in that email-with-your-own-custom-domain does, I'd consider that a success on the criteria of what federation is meant to achieve.
  - dotnet00 5y ago
    >I'm not sure what you mean, what's the "that", what do you think led to the situation where email is hard to self-host? I was referring to spam filtering, where all the big hosts know to allow each other through, but make it very difficult for smaller hosts to participate by being tight lipped about their filtering criteria and making others have to jump through lots of hoops to not be treated as spam. Which, when considering the high cost of being spam filtered (eg. if you're a business) ends up making it very hard to practically self-host. Similarly, I wouldn't think fediverse would have succeeded in the goals of federation with large centralized hosting providers. Since upon reaching critical mass, they could easily enact similar policies in the name of preventing spam or for 'safety'. The content would be going through their network and would be stored on their hardware, so they would use the same logic current social media uses to justify their right to moderate without oversight.
rglullis 5y ago
I've been waiting for you to join communick, as this has been my plan from the start. ;) I started with the simple "managed" hosting, now I am hearing things up to do custom hosting and the whitelabel.
Kye 5y ago
Interesting thing: one of the major ActivityPub platforms (Write.as) offers a white label version of their blogging platform if you don't want to run it yourself. https://writefreely.host/ https://writefreely.host/

by riffic 5y ago

beepbooptheory 5y ago

Maybe this was the underlying goal in their efforts with Bluesky?[1] 1. https://blueskyweb.org https://blueskyweb.org

riffic 5y ago
probably. Fortunately Bluesky is vaporware so the Fediverse and ActivityPub actually have the advantage here of being a standard that has an established community of implementors, and momentum. EDIT: I've said before, the PBLLC should be working with the W3C, IETF, or other open bodies, and they've always had a seat at the table (https://www.w3.org/Consortium/join https://www.w3.org/Consortium/join).
- pfraze 5y ago
  We're absolutely not vaporware. We're also completely happy to live in a world where both ActivityPub and Bluesky exist, and prioritize different problems with different approaches.

deltarholamda 5y ago

> I've been pitching this idea for years and no one's ever given a serious critique of the idea. It would dilute the Twitter brand and divide internal resources. That's the main critique I can think of. Would never happen while Twitter was a publicly traded corporation. Under private ownership, it very well might happen. I think the Fediverse idea is great, but people are dumb. @somebody is about as far as most people can handle. @somebody@domain.with.dots is confusing, and nobody will understand. Imagine having to explain bang paths to Fred in accounting so he can send an electronic mail. Never underestimate how obtuse the average computer user is. They can be taught, but it takes many, many years before it becomes common enough that people grok it without trouble. (I like your idea, btw.)

riffic 5y ago
fair critique and absolutely reasonable considering why they've never done it. It just seems like a more ethical business model than selling ads and data licensing (https://octodon.social/@jalefkowit/108216691483123862 https://octodon.social/@jalefkowit/108216691483123862).
dash2 5y ago
It's strange to argue that people are stupid because they don't want to deal with irrelevant technicalities. Are they also stupid because they prefer domain names to IP addresses?
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  Fair enough, swap out "ignorant" if you want. The learning curve for Internety-thing is pretty steep, which is why people like "Find us on Facebook!" so much. But what I was doing was comparing Fedi @somebody@some.thing.com to old-school bang paths. It's unlikely to take off among the masses until significant time passes. Heck, even email addresses baffle enough people to make me doubt whether all of this Internet stuff was worth the trouble.
  - riffic 5y ago
    > "Find us on Facebook!" ah, the modern take on "AOL Keyword:" from the late 90s.

dotnet00 5y ago

Don't hosted services defeat the point of federation in the first place? That's how we've ended up with email being as difficult as it is to self-host. Same issue with Discord, it's a centralized service where you and your content are at the mercy of the owner of the service, which I think is one of the big things that federated alternatives (like Matrix) are meant to solve, so any single entity can't unilaterally revoke your participation in the entire network.

jrochkind1 5y ago
I don't think so. Being able to switch what provider hosts your social media without losing your network is valuable (and has pro-social effects) without needing to self-host. > That's how we've ended up with email being as difficult as it is to self-host. I'm not sure what you mean, what's the "that", what do you think led to the situation where email is hard to self-host? Even if hard to self-host, email succeeds in avoiding vendor lock-in if you have your own domain. Which most people don't, because of cost and because _that_ can be hard to manage for a normal person. But if fediverse succeeds at giving a typical person the lack of vendor lock-in that email-with-your-own-custom-domain does, I'd consider that a success on the criteria of what federation is meant to achieve.
- dotnet00 5y ago
  >I'm not sure what you mean, what's the "that", what do you think led to the situation where email is hard to self-host? I was referring to spam filtering, where all the big hosts know to allow each other through, but make it very difficult for smaller hosts to participate by being tight lipped about their filtering criteria and making others have to jump through lots of hoops to not be treated as spam. Which, when considering the high cost of being spam filtered (eg. if you're a business) ends up making it very hard to practically self-host. Similarly, I wouldn't think fediverse would have succeeded in the goals of federation with large centralized hosting providers. Since upon reaching critical mass, they could easily enact similar policies in the name of preventing spam or for 'safety'. The content would be going through their network and would be stored on their hardware, so they would use the same logic current social media uses to justify their right to moderate without oversight.

rglullis 5y ago

I've been waiting for you to join communick, as this has been my plan from the start. ;) I started with the simple "managed" hosting, now I am hearing things up to do custom hosting and the whitelabel.

Kye 5y ago

Interesting thing: one of the major ActivityPub platforms (Write.as) offers a white label version of their blogging platform if you don't want to run it yourself. https://writefreely.host/ https://writefreely.host/