volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@z428

You mention half decade ago, and I'd reply by pointing out that concepts like PKI, Web of Trust, and other technologies that would enable nomadic identity have been around since the 80s at least.

These ideas were around for decades.

I really get the sense that ActivityPub developers were so focused on today's web technologies that they didn't go back and learn from past bodies of work that could have made a huge difference.

@pre @mike @silverpill @smallcircles

@z428 I'm very critical of ActivityPub for not having such features, and I have two thoughts about it.

Firstly, as far as I can tell there was a conscious decision to focus on instances. Many people very strongly embrace the patterns that arise out of the instance focus, the moderation, community, and inter-instance blocking stuff.

This human organization side of things is so obvious that I can't believe it wouldn't have been considered during standardization.

Secondly, when you look at the parts of the ActivityPub standard, things like use of http and certificates, it shows developers with a certain background grabbing certain pieces off the shelf that may not have been the most innovative parts to bring together.

Nomadic identity would have required a bit more thought than what ended up in ActivityPub. It raised some harder questions.

AP itself is inefficient and lacks anything groundbreaking. It's composed of off-the-shelf pieces that were cobbled together.

Frankly, AP seems to have been put together lazily, and the lack of portable identity reflects that.

@thisismissem

But many of us would rather agency over instance moderation.

I'm always focused on giving users as much control as possible over their own experiences, so shifting the balance to them and away from instance moderation is inline with my preferences.

Different people have different preferences in that question, but for a lot of us, such a shift is what we'd rather.

@Sheril

Twitter WAS worth $44B, to Musk, since that's what he paid.

His payment reflected how much it was worth to him.

The value of Twitter goes beyond advertising.

Twitter was always a cesspool, though, and it continues to stumble along, relevant as ever today.

Twitter was never great. It's not great today. But Musk is enjoying all the attention he got from his purchase, so I guess, good for him.

@mike

Ha, I suppose for some definition of small.

Dozens of people? Spanning various platforms?

I mean, we keep in touch, but we don't get tied down to any particular platform, and I'd suggest to others that they take the same approach.

Use platforms as tools, but don't rely on anything being provided by others, always keep in mind the alternatives because at any moment any platform may be shut down.

@chris

At that point it comes down to what you mean by "Fediverse", then.

When many people use that word they mean specifically projects using ActivityPub.

So what do you mean by that word?

@mike

Yep, and I'm completely OK with that.

In fact, I'd extend what I said above to be about my social graph: my whole network moves when the service gets bad, just as we'd stop meeting at a restaurant when they nosedive, and we find another.

It's just not a big deal for us, so I wouldn't lose my social graph. The whole thing just picks up and moves on.

That might be part of why we don't have to care about that concern. We're never beholden to any platform, always assuming all platforms will eventually end, and always one bad experience away from picking up and moving on.

@mike

Ah, it sounds like I misunderstood the original post then.

I thought you were saying you didn't understand why people went to the other platforms, when really it's that you don't understand why they have those particular weighings of values.

I think I got it now.

Me, I'm on their side. I really don't care who's running the system so long as it provides value, and the moment it stops providing value I'm gone.

Just like I don't care who's running the restaurant I go to, or who's running my doctor's office: no matter who's in charge, I'll go there for good service and not go there for bad service.

@iuculano

I think this, and other internal fighting, illustrates how the GOP isn't one homogeneous group but rather a coalition of groups with often very different approaches to the world.

So it's not really right to say Republicans are the problem for an instance like this since it's an attack on a Republican.

I don't know if Ann Coulter identifies as a conservative, but if anything it's more like conservatives are the problem. Not all Republicans are particularly conservative.

But really I think it's more that shock jock commentators like Coulter are the problem as they lob these grenades to get attention.... which we give to them, playing into their games.

@chris the protocol underlying the Fediverse, ActivityPub, is centered around instances as part of its core design.

It's like how the protocol for the web, http, is centered around web servers.

So a person can't build a system without instances and engage with fediverse. It's incompatible. Every message in the system would begin with, "So, what instance do we talk to to reach you?"

This is why alternatives like BlueSky and Nostr are in different worlds: their underlying protocols work in incompatible ways.

@caffetiel I don't know about either of these people, but I was just amused at @aral seeming to prove @B2Spirit's point without realizing it.

@filsalustri

Right, and through thermodynamics that heat can go all sorts of places ranging from effective sequestration on the planet through (most importantly) being shipped offworld into space through radiation.

And it can be moved around in ways to make that heat rejection more efficient.

Thermodynamics says this heat WANTS to get up into the cold of space, and there are ways we can move it around to help it get there faster!

@mxtthxw

@mike

Well, did you find their answers confusing, or in what other way were they insufficient to clarify why they were using it?

@feb do you have a link to what you're referring to? Maybe a part of a w3c recommendation?

We might be talking about different things here.

@Blort @mariusor

@mike well, have you discussed it with some of the actual people joining Bluesky?

You say you find it perplexing, and I don't think the best way to figure that out is to talk to the people around here who are largely opposed to making that choice.

I would say, though, that users don't control this platform either, so that isn't really a differentiating point.

@aral

You're the one who asked why people were still using Twitter.

It's funny that you'd react this way to someone touching on an answer to your question.

Of course, maybe you didn't actually want to know the answer, you were just throwing mud, but then see @B2Spirit s mention of self-righteousness...

@filsalustri

The thermodynamics are more complicated than that, though.

For example, concentrated heat may be more effectively bled off into space, as thermal radiation increases at the fourth power.

No, I'm not saying this is the solution to it all, but only that it's more complicated than just moving heat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law

@mxtthxw

@yourautisticlife

Doesn't fediverse still accept replies and allow discussion regardless of whether the original instance accepts replies?

If I reply to a post from one of their RSS feeds, or boost or share it, doesn't that all show up on timelines open for discussion regardless of whether they reject them?