John Conway
Big rumblings in the expansion of the #Fediverse have been happening recently.
#Tumblr has already promised to implement #ActivityPub (the protocol Mastodon uses), which will mean you can follow Tumblr accounts from here and vice versa. And today we a learning that #Flickr is also considering it!
This will be a massive expansion, which obviously carries some uncertainties, but I, for one, welcome our new federation partners.
This is the way the internet is supposed to work.
admin
Agreed ? Very exciting to hear about Flickr! Is there a link?
A rising tide lifts all boats ?
PammyStarr :ani_clubtwit: ✍️
@katedegerdon @john I assume more activity means more instances. It seems every busy celebrity needs their own, for instance. Businesses will pop up that specialize in running your Mastodon servers, etc.
katedegerdon anti-tory pro-eu
@john Will Mastadon's servers have the capacity to cope with all this new activity? They must have zillions arriving from Twitter too?
John Conway
@kadin @pammystarr @katedegerdon Other implementations of ActivityPub are more efficient, so I understand. Pleroma for one.
Still, I think masto.host offers a good deal, and their support is top-notch.
Toot.io also offers managed hosting, but it's starts pretty high: https://toot.io/mastodon_hosting.html
Kadin
@pammystarr @katedegerdon @john
That already exists: https://masto.host offers managed Mastodon hosting ($40/mo for ~500 users, seems a bit high but not unreasonable to me), but right now they are so swamped they're not taking new subscriptions. Heck of a problem to have as a business.
I do have some questions about how well Mastodon (the mainline server) scales, and if there are opportunities for optimization that could make managed hosting cheaper per user.
Ramiro Salas :verified:
@john @kadin @pammystarr @katedegerdon
I think Pleroma is the way to go. Its Elixir-based scalable architecture, design and compatibility surpasses Mastodon, but it does need more love on the web UI side of things.
The Metatext app connects seamlessly to it as well as Mastodon.
Kadin
@john
This is Reddit gossip so take it with a *very* large chunk of salt, but there are claims that:
> The founder of Pleroma, Lain, programed Pleroma to be harder to block from other instances than a comparable Mastodon Instance. Those blocked Pleroma instance Admins tell me their posts sometimes get through to the Mastodon servers.
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/Pleroma/comments/yu8xof/pleromas_rebased_fork_vs_akkoma_fork/
I don't know what that means from a technical perspective, though. How is an instance "hard to block"? ?♂️
admin
It can be done and in fact one new Fediverse entry, “Revolver,” being developed by @p claims to be nearly unblockable from Mastodon. Revolver will be released in Alpha in the coming months.
Perhaps @p can teach us a little about how Pleroma & Revolver do it?
John Conway
@rsalas @kadin @pammystarr @katedegerdon
Pleroma's web-facing aspect could do with some work, yes. But also, is there a reason Pleroma instances seem to be run by mostly trollish dickheads?
Nelson
@john Top reason is that Pleroma had a prominent TERF involved with development for a while, so the Pleroma community self-selected for people who are ok with transphobia. (Discussing this often attracts sea lions who claim that technology is neutral, bemoaning cancel culture.)
For people who like the technology but want a community that might enforce a code of conduct, consider the hard fork Akkoma instead: https://coffee-and-dreams.uk/development/2022/06/24/akkoma.html
piccolbo
@skyfaller @Richstjr @john but didn't Gab run in mastodon for a while? Couldn't i start a progressive server running pleroma? Or is hate hard-coded?
Nelson
@Richstjr @john And now I have to get specific, Alex Gleason is a TERF and he's the founder of Soapbox. I cannot recommend Soapbox to anyone, trans rights are human rights and this developer should not be welcome in any community.
RichSJ
@skyfaller @john I really wanted to like Pleroma, but its just too dang buggy (even Akkoma) and the interface is just all over the place. I definitely favor Mastodon, Misskey, and Soapbox.
admin
neo
RichSJ
@skyfaller @john Well, regardless of how people feel about Gleason, they can't deny that Soapbox is an excellent piece of software. (if a bit too tw*tt*r-like)
pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:
pistolero :thispersondoesnotexist:
admin
Thank you for your reply @p ?
Kadin
@admin @p @john
Without access to the code I'm speculating, but from the docs I don't think "un-blockable messages" is how it shakes out.
It appears that Revolver has a single, distributed DB with content split across its nodes (strong whiffs of FreeNet!), but at the edges it exposes an ActivityPub-compat LitePub endpoint, to interop with rest of Fedi. It also promises content filtering of what each node propagates.
A Masto admin would treat that LitePub endpoint like any other instance.
fluffy 💜
@john the thing about this that bugs me is that Flickr already supported independent federation via Atom and RSS feeds, and IMO ActivityPub is not a very good Atom/RSS replacement. Mastodon used to be based on Atom+WebSub, but then switched to ActivityPub not due to any real technical improvement but because it was easier to hack in private posting (badly), rather than working with any of the initiatives that existed to add post privacy to Atom.
admin
Why is Atom superior to ActivityPub? Please will you help a layman understand why no one can agree on a common RSS software?
How does ActivityPub compare to RASS-Bridge, Matrix, and Norstr used by Minds?
John Conway
@fluffy @admin I think ActivityPub was developed partly in response to what Mastodon was already doing, so I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, standards are good, on the other hand, sometimes implementation practicalities and moving a little faster are really important.
I kinda agree that ActivityPub is a pretty heavyweight solution that probably could have been solved by composing smaller already existing standards, but the ship has sailed.
fluffy 💜
@admin @john As far as those other protocols go, I only have a very surface-level understanding of Matrix, and I’ve never heard of those other ones. I’m also not particularly an expert at ActivityPub, and most of my exposure to it is Mastodon which doesn’t even implement it quite correctly per the spec — and now everything that implements ActivityPub is expected to be compatible with Mastodon, which really hampers the use of many of its features.
fluffy 💜
@admin @john The reason I feel that it’s superior is that it’s much simpler to implement (especially in a static hosting context), and the publish vs. subscribe mechanisms are separated. Push is also optional and temporary outages don’t mean a loss of communications overall. Also there are well-established patterns for declaring a feed for a specific resource. And why would one want to agree on a common RSS software? It’s all about having a shared protocol, not a shared implementation.
admin
Please can you explain this issue webfinger as a sole form of identity?
fluffy 💜
@john @admin Yes, but also the great thing about standards is there’s so many to choose from, and in theory Mastodon could support IndieWeb in addition to ActivityPub. Having multiple subscription types (and support for bearer tokens and adaptive polling) wouldn’t be the worst thing.
IMO the most unfortunate things about Mastodon’s implementation from a UX standpoint are their assumptions about post formatting, and their insistence on Webfinger as sole form of identity.
admin
GNU Too
GNU Too
Joshua F. Gonzales
@john How are they going to handle tags and reblogs? Tumblr users put entire life stories in the tags. Their communication style is extremely meta.
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