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Just like E-Mail, right? Really: The federation model is the same. It faces the same fundamental constraints (arguably exacerbated by some technical ones). Th

Just like E-Mail, right? Really: The federation model is the same. It faces the same fundamental constraints (arguably exacerbated by some technical ones). They've been solved for E-Mail. I believe they're solvable for ActivityPub by going through similar steps. We can argue about the centralization of E-Mail all we want: There are still multiple companies providing the service and it's possible to start your own. Yes, companies - I think that while loose and and more or less charitable communities definitely have a future, real stability and trust will come from entities large enough to be too big to easily fall over (and most naturally those are companies with paying users). I've seen so many small instances go away, leaving their users almost completely helpless and effectively locked out of the network. Keep in mind that your instance is your identity provider (I think there have been efforts to change this, but I'm not seeing any ways to migrate from an instance that is already gone).

pizzalife 4y ago
The analogy would be closer to Usenet than email.
kornhole 4y ago
Activity pub federation is much easier than email. Most of the ISP's block email ports on our home connections which requires us to setup mail relays just for the email verification of account setups. Then you have to do all kinds of work to make your email seem valid and not blocked by all the gatekeepers. Activity pub is just running over HTTPS, and we can control how we federate and block unwanted content with the great tools built into most implementations.
romwell 4y ago
>Just like E-Mail, right? Are you generally afraid of losing your email account for sending a rude message to someone? >It faces the same fundamental constraints (arguably exacerbated by some technical ones) No, because the technical constraints are very different. For one, with email, by default, you can keep the entire data at all times (remember email clients?). Your account being nuked isn't a big loss if you use the default mail app that came with your OS - your messages and contacts are still there, just email them all with a "hey, here's my new email". >Keep in mind that your instance is your identity provider Well that's the entire problem, right there.

pizzalife 4y ago

The analogy would be closer to Usenet than email.

kornhole 4y ago

Activity pub federation is much easier than email. Most of the ISP's block email ports on our home connections which requires us to setup mail relays just for the email verification of account setups. Then you have to do all kinds of work to make your email seem valid and not blocked by all the gatekeepers. Activity pub is just running over HTTPS, and we can control how we federate and block unwanted content with the great tools built into most implementations.

romwell 4y ago

>Just like E-Mail, right? Are you generally afraid of losing your email account for sending a rude message to someone? >It faces the same fundamental constraints (arguably exacerbated by some technical ones) No, because the technical constraints are very different. For one, with email, by default, you can keep the entire data at all times (remember email clients?). Your account being nuked isn't a big loss if you use the default mail app that came with your OS - your messages and contacts are still there, just email them all with a "hey, here's my new email". >Keep in mind that your instance is your identity provider Well that's the entire problem, right there.