4 ms·

I've wondered for awhile why someone hasn't started the Blogger.com of ActivityPub/Mastodon: 1 "instance" per person, no weird complicated group dynamics, the s

by tptacek 5mo ago

I've wondered for awhile why someone hasn't started the Blogger.com of ActivityPub/Mastodon: 1 "instance" per person, no weird complicated group dynamics, the service handles all the technical details, the user draws from the same cohort as the people who signed up for Blogger blogs in the early aughts. If there are advantages to ATProto over ActivityPub in this kind of deployment setting, they don't seem clear enough to offset the weird corporate parentage; like, I can see how Mastodon keeps chugging along no matter what companies get sold to who, but I don't see how ATProto survives the death of Bsky.

danabramov 5mo ago
I don’t know what you mean by “instances” here. Leaflet (https://leaflet.pub https://leaflet.pub) is one of those “blogger on atproto” things — is that what you mean?
- tptacek 5mo ago
  Literally just Mastodon servers, like Hachyderm, except for a single user.
  - krapp 5mo ago
    You literally just set up a Mastodon server and only have a single user. That's what I do, and as far as I know it's the only solution. A "lite" version of Mastodon that dispensed with all of the complexity involved with managing multiple accounts and was optimized for a single user might be nice but with a hosted account you're paying for data storage (which Mastodon seems horribly inefficient with) so in practice that extra complexity is moot.
    - tptacek 5mo ago
      Right, my point is, someone should stand up a service, like Blogger did for blogs, which were also trivial for people like us to set up and run on our own. The thing there is it destroys the objection people have about having to find and fit in with a particular Mastodon server community. It also makes Mastodon look more like the original blogosphere and less like Twitter, which is a good thing.
      - krapp 5mo ago
        There are services that do exactly that. Masto.host is the one I use. It is just an entire Mastodon instance with one account, though.
  - danabramov 5mo ago
    My bad, I misread your post as asking about single-user atproto "instances" (which confused me) but you said ActivityPub. I still don't quite understand your comment. >If there are advantages to ATProto over ActivityPub in this kind of deployment setting, they don't seem clear enough to offset the weird corporate parentage The advantage of atproto is that it's literally "the web". Every app can aggregate from entire network, there's no isolation by default. It reduces to the degenerate smallest case just the same — you can have a single-user app that simply displays content from your PDS. But you can also start aggregating things (e.g. comments left by other users, which are stored on their PDS's). The whole big idea of atproto is that every app is effectively a CMS for app-agnostic "model" web. What is the concrete thing bothering you? AT is already in the IETF process. It's not some weird corporate thing.
small_scombrus 5mo ago
The same reason that they don't do that for Email. It's a lot more complicated for little obvious gain
inigyou 5mo ago
So every user would have to individually block all the nazi and child porn instances?

by tptacek 5mo ago

danabramov 5mo ago

I don’t know what you mean by “instances” here. Leaflet (https://leaflet.pub https://leaflet.pub) is one of those “blogger on atproto” things — is that what you mean?

tptacek 5mo ago
Literally just Mastodon servers, like Hachyderm, except for a single user.
- krapp 5mo ago
  You literally just set up a Mastodon server and only have a single user. That's what I do, and as far as I know it's the only solution. A "lite" version of Mastodon that dispensed with all of the complexity involved with managing multiple accounts and was optimized for a single user might be nice but with a hosted account you're paying for data storage (which Mastodon seems horribly inefficient with) so in practice that extra complexity is moot.
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    Right, my point is, someone should stand up a service, like Blogger did for blogs, which were also trivial for people like us to set up and run on our own. The thing there is it destroys the objection people have about having to find and fit in with a particular Mastodon server community. It also makes Mastodon look more like the original blogosphere and less like Twitter, which is a good thing.
    - krapp 5mo ago
      There are services that do exactly that. Masto.host is the one I use. It is just an entire Mastodon instance with one account, though.
- danabramov 5mo ago
  My bad, I misread your post as asking about single-user atproto "instances" (which confused me) but you said ActivityPub. I still don't quite understand your comment. >If there are advantages to ATProto over ActivityPub in this kind of deployment setting, they don't seem clear enough to offset the weird corporate parentage The advantage of atproto is that it's literally "the web". Every app can aggregate from entire network, there's no isolation by default. It reduces to the degenerate smallest case just the same — you can have a single-user app that simply displays content from your PDS. But you can also start aggregating things (e.g. comments left by other users, which are stored on their PDS's). The whole big idea of atproto is that every app is effectively a CMS for app-agnostic "model" web. What is the concrete thing bothering you? AT is already in the IETF process. It's not some weird corporate thing.

small_scombrus 5mo ago

The same reason that they don't do that for Email. It's a lot more complicated for little obvious gain

inigyou 5mo ago

So every user would have to individually block all the nazi and child porn instances?