Notices by 🫧 Social coding commons (smallcircles@social.coop)

@silverpill @mariusor @evan

You made your point. It is non-productive. You have a conflict with a person and a whole developer ecosystem fractures and weakens. Other than that it saddens me that people in progressive circles always seem to get so easily into harsh conflict with each other, and we effectively 'divide ourselves to be conquered', while beyond Big Tech thrives and fascism festers unabated. Big Tech bobo's can only smile and think "nothing to fear here".

@silverpill @mariusor @evan

All the time you point to 1 person with gross accusations and convict a whole group with all spec authors including Christine. Contributors like Trwnh and ThisIsMissEm, many others. Calling them "useful idiots". That is hot-headed and unproductive.

Did you consider that, being the one who volunteers his time in a custodianship role, also now treats the FEP as his own FOSS project, where you are effectively the BDFL? And that that hurts the credibility of the FEP, making the sole decision to break connection with the SWICG? Deny its role. That connection still existed when you took on the facilitating role. Where is the carried decision to break it?

Being a facilitator means having to deal with many people who all have different motives, strong opinions, get into clashes with each other. And making the best of it. Trying to keep discussions polite and respectful.

Evan and I have different views on the future of the fedi. I don't think he's a Meta puppet.

@silverpill @tctdiy_gaming

That donation to a non-profit is peanuts for a Big Tech, pocket change. They may spend a billion or more if they are really interested and choose to actively create a position.

#Fediverse today consists of apps and app platforms. It is entirely app-centric.

Since fediverse (luckily) didn't attract much corporate attention yet, it is dominated by #FOSS culture, where people on the #SocialWeb are all "users" that are dependent on FOSS developers to serve their needs. Every dev focuses on their app features first and #interoperability second, leading to a patchwork of poorly integrated apps, and a janky overall experience. The app delivery model is not much different than Web 2.0.

A paradigm shift is possible, to a #SocialNetwork of apps and services, a service-oriented #fedi. The efforts around the #ActivityPub API can be the enabler of this shift.

In this new paradigm devs introduce solutions to a unified #SocialNetworking space, delivering new services to participants on the network. On top of a robust Protocol Layer they model social use cases in the Data Layer, integrating with services and building blocks already available.

https://coding.social/blog/prosocial-web

@tctdiy_gaming

Yes, indeed. Luckily they decided fedi is not interesting enough as yet to either snuff out or capture. If they'd make that decision there'd hardly be a defense.

One of the big weaknesses of fediverse today is that 8 years after #ActivityPub became a W3C Recommendation we are still figuring out basic core protocol plumbing. And without a robust foundation to build compliant solutions on follow-the-leader post-facto interoperability is how the fediverse evolves.

The trend today is that there are two outcomes for fedi's future. Either it doesn't gain broad adoption and remains niche (not the worst outcome), or it "crosses the chasm" and gains broad popularity which will trigger a corporate capture and takeover.

The challenge we face is entirely social in nature. The technology is not the problem. It is there. Open technology space for anyone to dabble in. Fediverse needs a tight-knit community of carers that ensure it will become more than cold technology space.

@silverpill @mariusor @evan

I was talking specifically about the SWICG. No one has a paid position in the SWICG.

That people earn their living in some way, have a job, are self-employed, receive funding/donations/grants.. well, everyone needs bread on the table, right?

I'd personally not accept funding from Meta, and they are anathema to what fediverse stands for imho.

But that is not the SWICG. It is literally a "community group" where multiple well-known folks from the dev community bring their expertise to, give helping hand with the unthankful chores, very similar to FEP or other ecosystem hotspots.

And collectively we are tasked with bringing fedi to a better place all the time, protect it from harms, and malign corporate influences.

Whether it is ideal or not (I expressed my opinion on this earlier), the W3C as home of the official specs, is part of the ecosystem, and a fractured ecosystem is a weaker one than when it is united and operating as a larger collective.

@mariusor

The way I always understood this CLA is that it protects you from a patent infringement claim from some random company holding a software patent, and bringing you in big legal trouble.

Dunno if I misunderstood.@evan?

@mariusor

I just read your docs on handling C2S collections, and just thought to drop you the link to the SeekItem draft that @evan has created. Dunno if its relevant to you, so just FYI:

https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-api/seekitem

https://git.sr.ht/~mariusor/fedbox/tree/master/doc/c2s.md

@mariusor @evan

Oh, it is great that that is turned into a #FEP. Thank you!

Other than that - even though I have thoughts on the current standardization process and the role of the SWICG (see quote) - I don't think your critique of SWICG is fair in this case. The SeekItem is still just an unofficial draft by Evan, as 'random' as anything that happens in the developer ecosystem, and the SWICG is explicitly seeking feedback from the AP developer community to improve these specs so they gain broader buy-in and adoption. In that regard it is no different than proposing a FEP, I guess?

But I understand your point about energy and all that. Am running on low-bat myself in that regard :(

https://social.coop/@smallcircles/117185510811483948

@mariusor @evan

> Their primary mission becomes to keep track of what's happening in the community.

I agree on that, partially. It goes both ways, to the benefit of everyone. The folks at the SWICG are also just volunteering their time as participants in the same developer ecosystem. A bit of giving and a bit of taking is needed.

That said, we have a bottom-up standardization process, not a top-down hyper-formal one that is more appropriate for creating corporate industry standards. And the SWICG tends to the latter, which is imho a flaw and mistake similar to how Solid project operates, and fails to reach their community.

Fediverse evolution is community-driven first and foremost.

@silverpill

I am writing a blog post around the opportunities that C2S and the ActivityPub API offer to the fediverse, and I was wondering which FEP's you consider to be essential to adopt for any implementer moving in this direction. And perhaps which ones are good should-haves and nice-to-haves.

I gather that FEP-fc48: Generic ActivityPub server is likely part of this list. @Steve_Bate in his article on C2S also lists a number of related FEP's.

Is it an idea to have an overarching profile, that keeps track of these requirements, or is there already something along these lines?

@silverpill @phnt @jupiter_rowland @rimu @elle

It is mostly a social challenge, not a technological one. We had a technology standard, ActivityPub, developers built apps with that, and the fediverse-we-have formed by emergence.

It might have been beneficial if there was a technology vision based on what ActivityPub is capable of, and project 5 to 10 years from now on where we could be.

Even better would be a socio-technical imagining of the future of social networking and how it might serve and benefit people.

As guiding lights for the development of the grassroots ecosystem. As a means for people to put their noses in the same direction, and cocreate that future together. As a means to establish grassroots chaordic organization that enables us to get there.

That can all still be done, although I doubt if the fediverse as a whole can still be course-corrected. More likely are either continue as-is or forks in the road ahead. Or new technology that ultimately takes over the field.

@phnt @jupiter_rowland @rimu @silverpill @elle

I spent years as SocialHub facilitator and know the frustrations. The W3C is also populated with app devs, albeit with different opinions wrt the future of social networking. The sad thing is that we have a fragmented ecosystem today and that is not good for the fediverse as a whole.

Ideally a whole end-to-end community-driven grassroots standardization effort would exist now, able to evolve fedi both in technical, socio-technical, and socio-cultural aspects.

What fediverse is, and importantly what it can be, is imho insufficiently discussed. Fediverse is merely an open technology space now, where devs build their apps.

But the stakes are much higher. Beyond our fedi there's an Epstein class, owners of AI and Social Media, who are building a technofascist society, using these technologies as their weaponry.

Fediverse can be our answer. An innovation by the people, for the people. But it won't be if its merely an open technology space.

@silverpill @jupiter_rowland @elle @rimu

Your perspective is "that what app / FOSS projects do, and works, is a good thing". And that is a very pragmatic, workable approach in this difficult grassroots ecoysystem we have.

It also leads to a fediverse that is wholly app-centric, evolving by FOSS culture. Fediverse is 'ruled' by app devs as it were, and a "user" can only hope that the app they chose will fit their needs. This is not an ideal social networking environment, and not very different than Web 2.0.

But I am the first to admit that it will be very hard to rise to a more non-technical solution-oriented fediverse evolution process, where fedizens have more say in how the social network evolves.

@silverpill @rimu @elle

Not per se. But a full-blown compliance test suite to come along with the protocol specifications would still be a great thing to have.

@evan @silverpill @rimu @elle

Unfortunately I spent my time. Can't afford to spend more, sadly.

@silverpill @rimu @elle

Having looked in more detail at the #SWICG document. That's not the 3-stage process I advocated for at the time, and I agree with you: It will not work. Such top-down formal ceremony just does not fit a grassroots ecosystem.

Generally speaking I don't think #W3C as a standardization body is up to the task of being a good host for the ActivityPub specification. It is a) not organized for our environment, and b) only takes care of the technical aspects. Our social media landscape has a huge social component, and this is wholly underrepresented in our app-centric fediverse, where people are merely "users" and #FOSS culture is the only driving force.

Today I think SWICG should focus on the 'Protocol implementer' stakeholder: How can they offer compliant #ActivityPub protocol implementations.

Then #FEP can focus on the 'Solution developer', relieved from the plumbing: What interoperable designs do they use to serve the needs of participants on the social network.

@silverpill @rimu @elle

I wrote a comment in the open issue on the 3-stage process, in the SWICG charters repo..

https://github.com/swicg/charters/issues/33#issuecomment-5470092604

#ActivityPub #SocialWeb #fediverse

@jupiter_rowland @silverpill

What I have seen during the years (but it may be from before my fedi entry in 2018) in my perception there never was something you can describe as a "front against Mike".

I think what is more the case is that there are particular social dynamics at work in the fediverse developer ecosystem, whereby Mike's work didn't find the adoption it deserved, for a whole host of reasons determined by these dynamics. "Build it and they will come" is for instance a risky assumption, without advocacy.

More independent of what Mike does..

That what the fediverse is, and does, and can be.. It is all in the eye of the beholder. Each person has different interpretations and expectations. There's no consensus. But worse. Fediverse is seen as a pure technoverse, an open technology landscape to freely exploit.

In that light Mastodon is a platform, a product, a brand. Fully focused to be successful.. for Mastodon. Not for the fediverse per se.

https://social.coop/@smallcircles/117155651825015037

@silverpill @rimu @elle

I agree that ap-next is not a fork, and might have stayed on that website. That said I don't think there's deeper politics to this removal, just that the links on the site are rather arbitrary and in need of good curation. E.g. fedify is nice to mention, but also just but one such project where there are multiple.

The entire online presence of SWICG/SocialCG including the AP.rocks website are a mess that almost seems designed to discourage ecosystem participants.

It saddens me as 3 years ago, when AP.rocks was still considered to be part of SocialHub, I had a whole initiative prepared to once and for all create a great developer portal at this domain name.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/activitypub-rocks-portal-from-standards-movement-to-grassroots-fedi/3577

In particular that top-level aggregator site would need to serve as an entry point to drill down into the entire grassroots ecosystem, help people find their way around..

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/ideating-organization-structure-for-the-grassroots-fediverse-wiki/3037

The SWICG took over that initiative without consultation, and then let it languish.