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I used to wonder "What would Social Networking look like if it were based on self-hosted pages written with microformats like h-card[0]?", but presumably the an

I used to wonder "What would Social Networking look like if it were based on self-hosted pages written with microformats like h-card[0]?", but presumably the answer is "a privacy nightmare" (even more so than existing social networks). Perhaps a better answer to that question is "the Fediverse", which is based on ActivityPub. Unfortunately, though, there still seem to be open questions about how well/widely the Fediverse supports something like "circles" (the concept that Google Plus had) for selectively sharing content with different groups of people. [0] http://microformats.org/wiki/h-card http://microformats.org/wiki/h-card [1] https://rusingh.com/fediverse-google-plus-circles/ https://rusingh.com/fediverse-google-plus-circles/

fsiefken 4y ago
Yes, this is something were facebook excels at, but it can also create in-group and out-group dynamics. A possible federated solution: https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/6128-Federated-access-control-with-Atom-and-WebSub https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/6128-Federated-access-control-with...
madrox 4y ago
The specific idea, way back then, was DiSo [1]. Believe it or not, privacy wasn't the concern back then. The real problem was UX. Setting up and maintaining this stuff was Hard, and the network effect mattered a lot more in getting adoption. Facebook was really good at onboarding flows. OpenID lost to Facebook Connect for similar reasons. 1: https://diso-project.org/ https://diso-project.org/
- willnorris 4y ago
  UX definitely ended up being one of the hardest parts. We also never got to the point of really building a compelling product on top of the protocols. We did actually do some work on privacy though, but it never got super far. For example, you could set simple access controls on content that was only available to friends that logged in with an OpenID. I think I had it so that certain of your hcard attributes were only included for authenticated users as well. Some of the work we did then still exists today in various forms. Activity Steams led to Activity Pub, which has seen far more adoption than we ever did. And microformats are still widely used in some communities, though certainly not like it could have been, largely things to Google putting weight behind schema.org. For example, nearly all of the indieweb.org work is based around microformats at the core, with things like webmention, micropub, etc
  - madrox 4y ago
    The man himself! Thanks for chiming in.
mawise 4y ago
Haven[1] is my open-source, self-hosted side project for building exactly this (social networking based on self-hosted pages) in a privacy-first manner. There's a lot from the IndieWeb community that I want to emulate, and microformats is one of them--partly in order to create compatibility with the various MF2/IndieAuth client (phone) apps. My experience/opinion is that a circles-based approach is a usability nightmare since relationships are fluid and fuzzy, so Haven only has one "share group"--everyone with access to your Haven. That said, it's all built on open protocols (RSS), so it would be pretty straightforward for someone to fork it or build their own that implemented a circles-style approach to sharing. [1]: https://havenweb.org https://havenweb.org

fsiefken 4y ago

Yes, this is something were facebook excels at, but it can also create in-group and out-group dynamics. A possible federated solution: https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/6128-Federated-access-control-with-Atom-and-WebSub https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/6128-Federated-access-control-with...

madrox 4y ago

The specific idea, way back then, was DiSo [1]. Believe it or not, privacy wasn't the concern back then. The real problem was UX. Setting up and maintaining this stuff was Hard, and the network effect mattered a lot more in getting adoption. Facebook was really good at onboarding flows. OpenID lost to Facebook Connect for similar reasons. 1: https://diso-project.org/ https://diso-project.org/

willnorris 4y ago
UX definitely ended up being one of the hardest parts. We also never got to the point of really building a compelling product on top of the protocols. We did actually do some work on privacy though, but it never got super far. For example, you could set simple access controls on content that was only available to friends that logged in with an OpenID. I think I had it so that certain of your hcard attributes were only included for authenticated users as well. Some of the work we did then still exists today in various forms. Activity Steams led to Activity Pub, which has seen far more adoption than we ever did. And microformats are still widely used in some communities, though certainly not like it could have been, largely things to Google putting weight behind schema.org. For example, nearly all of the indieweb.org work is based around microformats at the core, with things like webmention, micropub, etc
- madrox 4y ago
  The man himself! Thanks for chiming in.

mawise 4y ago

Haven[1] is my open-source, self-hosted side project for building exactly this (social networking based on self-hosted pages) in a privacy-first manner. There's a lot from the IndieWeb community that I want to emulate, and microformats is one of them--partly in order to create compatibility with the various MF2/IndieAuth client (phone) apps. My experience/opinion is that a circles-based approach is a usability nightmare since relationships are fluid and fuzzy, so Haven only has one "share group"--everyone with access to your Haven. That said, it's all built on open protocols (RSS), so it would be pretty straightforward for someone to fork it or build their own that implemented a circles-style approach to sharing. [1]: https://havenweb.org https://havenweb.org