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   Let The Right Hon In (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 04:51:22 JST Let The Right Hon In

   I'm gonna be that guy and point out that when people say "the Fediverse" what they probably more specifically mean is "what's implemented by Mastodon, a social network built on top of ActivityPub" and that for certain conversations, this matters.

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 04:51:03 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     @danhon I'd go the other way. Bluesky (and whatever else happens on the AT Protocol) is part of the fediverse, as are all the non-Mastodon AP servers.

   • Embed this notice
     Let The Right Hon In (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 04:51:14 JST Let The Right Hon In

     in reply to

     Like, practically speaking, when we say "take the useful parts of Bluesky's experiments and port them over to the Fediverse" what I think people mean in practice is "port them over to Mastodon”.

     I really don't think there is a Fediverse (i.e. an underlying network-of-networks speaking a common protocol of which Mastodon is _one_ application). There's just Mastodon. That's it.

   • Embed this notice
     Let The Right Hon In (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 06:16:49 JST Let The Right Hon In

     in reply to

     jwz has it absolutely right at the end of his post on mastodos/mastodonts on him referring to "Mastodon" instead of “ActivityPub" or "the Fediverse”:

     Right now, there is *only* the Mastodon application and Mastodon clients, and those clients speak the Mastodon API, not really ActivityPub. There is only a network of Mastodon servers, the amount of other-ActivityPub happening is negligble, which is super sad but understandable.

     https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/mastodons-mastodonts/

   • Embed this notice
     Let The Right Hon In (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 06:16:50 JST Let The Right Hon In

     in reply to

     Say what you like about the initial "ownership" or backing of the AT Protocol, it is much more from the place of "people who have done this before" than what I'll freely admit is a very successful open source hobby project with a bunch of contributions back _and_ that has a pseudo- bdfl.

     Matthew Lyon repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Let The Right Hon In (danhon@dan.mastohon.com)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 06:16:51 JST Let The Right Hon In

     in reply to

     I'm increasingly worried about a Mastodon monoculture and have been trying to figure out what to do about it and how to do those things.

     There are no killer apps for ActivityPub (yet?), and to the extent that Mastodon *is* a killer app for ActivityPub, I'll say it's a niche and sustaining one.

   • Embed this notice
     phiofx (phiofx@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 07:35:14 JST phiofx

     in reply to

     @danhon we wouldn't be here and nobody would give a damn about activitypub if it wasn't for the "mastodon monoculture".

     The historical coincidences that made this happen are not important (being at the right place and time to benefit a little from the demise of twitter). What is important, as per Woody Allen, is to show up. And mastodon did.

     People now complain about all sorts of rough edges with the protocol, with mastodon etc.

     Thats because they care. Good things happen when people care.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 11:29:15 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Tim Bray

     @timbray @danhon I think you've mixed up the Mastodon API, which is a client-to-server API, and the Mastodon implementation of ActivityPub, including profiles for HTTP Signatures and Webfinger. I know that's kind of a complicated difference. I think Mastodon has done a great job of building an amazing ecosystem, but we still have work to do. The great part is that its an open protocol, so we can work on improving it together.

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Bray (timbray@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 11:29:16 JST Tim Bray

     in reply to

     @danhon Eh, not that troubling? ActivityPub was an interesting theory, the Masto API extends it ways that nobody realized would be useful until there was deployment at scale. Fortunately, while the Masto API may in theory be controlled by Eugen & posse, it’s too late to change it now, too many different clients. Basically, whether you call it Masto or AP++, there is now a de-facto standard in place. Enough to build on?

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 08-Feb-2024 11:31:39 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @danhon We have a standards group at the W3C working hard on building new features for ActivityPub. Mastodon is an important part, but there are people from lots of different projects working there. It's OK if you don't see that. I'd also like to see more interesting and diverse applications built on top of ActivityPub.