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Federation should be the way but time and again we have seen federation fail, first for chats (XMPP) then for Blurbs (twitter vs mastodon), and social networks

Federation should be the way but time and again we have seen federation fail, first for chats (XMPP) then for Blurbs (twitter vs mastodon), and social networks where there's not even a big enough name to mention for federated social networks.

ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
Depending on what specifically you're talking about, what you say might or might not make sense. For chat, it depends on what you mean by fail. What actually happened/is happening, is that XMPP the protocol works so well, that most chat apps start by just being another XMPP app, and if they ever get traction they make their servers incompatible with XMPP. That's what WhatsApp did for example. For social networks, Mastodon is quite large especially in the tech space. It's just not facebook-size. But given that Facebook's success is driven by getting people addicted to their phones, I see this as a sign that Mastodon is doing better. Mastodon doesn't try and get you addicted. And the federation aspect works AMAZINGly. I don't know/even care whether a user I'm interacting with is in the same instance or not. And I can subscribe not just to publications of Mastodon users but also blogs, photo apps etc which implement the ActivityPub protocol. So yeah, what you said is not nonsense, but I 100% disagree with "doesn't have 1bn users therefore federation failed".
- herewulf 9mo ago
  If federation really works that well, then it sounds like Mastodon/ActivityPub is ripe for carrying Git repository metadata and discussion. Obviously Git development works very well with mailing lists, other than the centralized server requirement, awkwardness (for most users), and technical limitations of mailing lists. So then you just need your federated discussions to carry patches or point to publicly accessible repos and put some decent UI (of choice) on top of that. Even issues are mainly just discussions with some metadata attached and as long as they can be surfaced in a way to be attached to a project, then they could be created by anyone. Hmm.. Surely there is already effort being focused in this direction?
  - ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
    There is, it's called ForgeFed https://nlnet.nl/project/ForgeFed/ https://nlnet.nl/project/ForgeFed/
estimator7292 9mo ago
There are more mastodon servers than GitHub servers
the_biot 9mo ago
You're right about federation having failed in those instances, or at least failed to take over the world as was expected. But Forgejo is a git + associated services application first and foremost. It's clearly on the up, and this federation is no more than a planned feature that may or may not catch on. You make it sound like Forgejo will fail because of it, but it's just an add-on.

ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago

Depending on what specifically you're talking about, what you say might or might not make sense. For chat, it depends on what you mean by fail. What actually happened/is happening, is that XMPP the protocol works so well, that most chat apps start by just being another XMPP app, and if they ever get traction they make their servers incompatible with XMPP. That's what WhatsApp did for example. For social networks, Mastodon is quite large especially in the tech space. It's just not facebook-size. But given that Facebook's success is driven by getting people addicted to their phones, I see this as a sign that Mastodon is doing better. Mastodon doesn't try and get you addicted. And the federation aspect works AMAZINGly. I don't know/even care whether a user I'm interacting with is in the same instance or not. And I can subscribe not just to publications of Mastodon users but also blogs, photo apps etc which implement the ActivityPub protocol. So yeah, what you said is not nonsense, but I 100% disagree with "doesn't have 1bn users therefore federation failed".

herewulf 9mo ago
If federation really works that well, then it sounds like Mastodon/ActivityPub is ripe for carrying Git repository metadata and discussion. Obviously Git development works very well with mailing lists, other than the centralized server requirement, awkwardness (for most users), and technical limitations of mailing lists. So then you just need your federated discussions to carry patches or point to publicly accessible repos and put some decent UI (of choice) on top of that. Even issues are mainly just discussions with some metadata attached and as long as they can be surfaced in a way to be attached to a project, then they could be created by anyone. Hmm.. Surely there is already effort being focused in this direction?
- ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
  There is, it's called ForgeFed https://nlnet.nl/project/ForgeFed/ https://nlnet.nl/project/ForgeFed/

estimator7292 9mo ago

There are more mastodon servers than GitHub servers

the_biot 9mo ago

You're right about federation having failed in those instances, or at least failed to take over the world as was expected. But Forgejo is a git + associated services application first and foremost. It's clearly on the up, and this federation is no more than a planned feature that may or may not catch on. You make it sound like Forgejo will fail because of it, but it's just an add-on.