Why ActivityPub is the future • Hacker News Board

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#121

Post by mgummelt » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 10:02 PM UTC

froasty wrote: post #119

mgummelt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Secondly, the notion that by federating or centralizing, you can avoid or generate discursal control is pretty unfounded. The 2016 US Presidential election and Brexit are more than enough evidence of that. Control isn't binary. Facebook can exert much control over discourse while still being vulnerable to powerful actors.

If your narrative can be derailed by pseudo-anonymous actors, you don't control the narrative. The idea that I'm primarily disagreeing with is that Facebook, Twitter, et al. can be hegemonic in a user-populated space. I don't think they can. They can certainly exert large amounts of influence and constrain it, but it's not monolithic and they don't control it. Federation only makes that influence more invisible. It c…

You're still replying as if control is binary. No, FB doesn't fully control the content on their platform. Nor does China fully control their media. But they still exert much more control than do distributed systems.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#122

Post by s73v3r_ » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #61

fiatjaf wrote: post #37

Who's going to host thousands of petabytes of videos on behalf of others if not YouTube or a similar service?

As anyone involved on the major torrent communities knows, at least some people are willing to share the great artistic achievements of mankind, worthwhile documentary material, etc. You will usually find seeders for the great canon of films, ebooks, all manner of musical genres, etc. So, I assume that for videos that really matter to some loyal audience, at least some people will set aside storage space for that. Ho…

Yes? Aside from YouTube shows, one of the big things YouTube brought about was the ability for anyone to post a video online, even if it was just for friends and family. Saying, "Too bad, you're not popular so you don't get to have video hosting" is a huge step backwards.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#123

Post by kaishiro » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #122

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As anyone involved on the major torrent communities knows, at least some people are willing to share the great artistic achievements of mankind, worthwhile documentary material, etc. You will usually find seeders for the great canon of films, ebooks, all manner of musical genres, etc. So, I assume that for videos that really matter to some loyal audience, at least some people will set aside storage space for that. Ho…

Yes? Aside from YouTube shows, one of the big things YouTube brought about was the ability for anyone to post a video online, even if it was just for friends and family. Saying, "Too bad, you're not popular so you don't get to have video hosting" is a huge step backwards.

Couldn't the original poster of said video be the one to seed it if it was so important to them that it be viewable to others. Why is the onus on a company or organization to host personal videos for free? (If I'm misrepresenting your stance feel free to call me on it - but that's what I'm taking away from your comment)

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#124

Post by type0 » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

kovacs wrote: post #79

daveid wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be a better name?

Nearly anything that's ideally one or two syllables, phonetically easy to say, and can have a reasonable brand built around it. Not that these are awesome but just examples off the top of my head so I'm not just saying "they suck" without providing alternatives... Ivy - Naturally grows and spreads and often is seen climbing walls. Maybe in this case it climbs and covers a FB wall :-P Also a play on FB being started a…

The better name to Mastodon would be Pleroma!

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#125

Post by jancsika » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

I get it from a developer standpoint, but I don't get it at all from a user standpoint.

For example:

joinmastodon.org gives me two dropdown boxes at the bottom of their frontpage. One asks what my interest is, the other asks what language I speak. Then it ajaxes in some links to different instances which (I suppose) are geared toward the interest I chose.

Does this mean that for each interest I must sign up on a different instance, controlled by a different entity with their own terms of service?

Edit: clarification

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#126

Post by CM30 » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

remir wrote: post #87

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter: they grew to what they are today because each of them had people behind the wheel with a product mentality . This mentality attracted the capital and talent necessary to create products that resonated with people . Now, some would say that, these services had the goal to make money and that's why they attracted capital and could hire top talent, but it doesn't change the fact t…

This is a good point, though it's more something the products/services using ActivityPub need to consider rather than the procol makers themselves. Focus less on how neat the tech is and more on what people can use it for, with a clear purpose that your software fulfills in an easy to use way.

Too many 'hacker/techie focused' projects focus on grandiose visions and philosophical points at the expense of a real purpose.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#127

Post by Flenser » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

mgummelt wrote: post #95

Brakenshire wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, ActivityPub is a just a standard, it wouldn’t be meaningful to complain about the product mentality of HTTP or JSON. The people building the websites or applications that use ActivityPub are the ones who need the product mentality, and they could use any business model they like.

The rub is that standards are difficult to productize because they're difficult to iterate on. They're rigid by definition.

Tell that to Github.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#128

Post by kovacs » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 11:07 PM UTC

type0 wrote: post #124

kovacs wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly anything that's ideally one or two syllables, phonetically easy to say, and can have a reasonable brand built around it. Not that these are awesome but just examples off the top of my head so I'm not just saying "they suck" without providing alternatives... Ivy - Naturally grows and spreads and often is seen climbing walls. Maybe in this case it climbs and covers a FB wall :-P Also a play on FB being started a…

The better name to Mastodon would be Pleroma!

face palm

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#129

Post by lilbobbytables » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 11:11 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #104

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly- email would be nothing without outlook and gmail, http might have fallen without netscape. We need products on ActivityPub that beat real products

Email was there before outlook and Gmail and will still be long after Gmail sunsets it and Microsoft rebrands outlook to something like "Microsoft xbox delayed chat system".

And it was productized before then. AOL being a huge one ("You've got mail"), and Hotmail also coming to mind.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#130

Post by mgummelt » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 11:11 PM UTC

Flenser wrote: post #127

mgummelt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rub is that standards are difficult to productize because they're difficult to iterate on. They're rigid by definition.

Tell that to Github.

As far as I'm aware, git isn't a standard. It's a single implementation.