HAH! I had been thinking about this concept for a while. Apparently, I was not the only one. There's more types of applications that I think could potentially benefit from ActivityPub, too: maybe I'm not too late to find one to be first with.
My main concern with ActivityPub right now is operators that are serious about keeping the lights on long-term. I think community-run servers are way better in terms of the ceiling of quality, atmosphere, etc. vs corporate servers and servers ran by VC-funded startups. Having a lot of people posting software on ActivityPub federated instances might not be so bad, though: at the very least, it does offer some natural replication across instances, so presumably anything popular enough would tend to travel around.
I know there's a lot of fervor over whether Mastodon is good or Twitter is good or whatever. I think that right now, today, the "fediverse" as it is is still nascent and far from its full potential. The software is still clunky, there's a lot of inter-instance drama to sort out, etc. I strongly believe, for one thing, that instances and software need to get serious about the overall health of the federation: allowing users to communicate and interact with eachother are more important than instance-related squabbles, so I think discouraging full defederation is important for the fate of the federation long-term. (Importantly, having better tools to solve issues with a less heavy-handed approach would be preferred.)
Even with all of these problems, though... There's just a little glimmer of hope that maybe, the modern web does not have to be so shit. Outside the influence of poorly moderated, massive, corporate-ran social media, there's an undercurrent of a different kind of web. Open networks, real moderation, and even the coveted "nuance" exists, in some small corners. Yes, there's a lot of stupidity too, but the thing about it is, stupidity on massive borderline-unmoderated networks is impossible to avoid. On federated services, it can in fact be compartmentalized to a degree, and if instances really are causing trouble and refusing to moderate themselves, the nuclear option always remains a viable one.
A part of me does wonder if all of these defederated networks just want to be P2P networks but the technology and platform just isn't there today. The most advanced P2P technology I'm aware of is in the IPFS stack, but I'm unconvinced it would be a good foundation to build much on today. One must wonder, though...
Last I checked IPFS has some real bandwidth problems, it uses enough at idle and everyone just accepts it, so it's mostly only usable through gateways for normal people, meanwhile BitTorrent has had full P2P for years with a very efficient DHT.
Which is still really cool, but there's only a few free pinning services and they don't have a very good UI.
I think what we really need is semi-P2P, everything still hosted on centralized servers, but you can choose more than one and your identity isn't tied to either, and with cache-ability through other servers. Then you can still pay with fiat money, you can still kick individuals off your server, you can still choose to use free youretheproductware, and most importantly you can use community servers without it just being madness to invest too much time.
Either that, or we git-like fork-able and mergable forums with all content creative commons like Wikipedia. Old forums were amazing for community building.
Thank you! And yes, it works fantastically well. I've not had any luck getting buy in from OTF or similar for example, because it's too broad. Because it's a technical overhaul, it doesn't target any specific interest groups. Here's the pitch https://gist.github.com/anacrolix/41bd6cc60869b4ee86b8f086d1...
My main concern with ActivityPub right now is operators that are serious about keeping the lights on long-term. I think community-run servers are way better in terms of the ceiling of quality, atmosphere, etc. vs corporate servers and servers ran by VC-funded startups. Having a lot of people posting software on ActivityPub federated instances might not be so bad, though: at the very least, it does offer some natural replication across instances, so presumably anything popular enough would tend to travel around.
I know there's a lot of fervor over whether Mastodon is good or Twitter is good or whatever. I think that right now, today, the "fediverse" as it is is still nascent and far from its full potential. The software is still clunky, there's a lot of inter-instance drama to sort out, etc. I strongly believe, for one thing, that instances and software need to get serious about the overall health of the federation: allowing users to communicate and interact with eachother are more important than instance-related squabbles, so I think discouraging full defederation is important for the fate of the federation long-term. (Importantly, having better tools to solve issues with a less heavy-handed approach would be preferred.)
Even with all of these problems, though... There's just a little glimmer of hope that maybe, the modern web does not have to be so shit. Outside the influence of poorly moderated, massive, corporate-ran social media, there's an undercurrent of a different kind of web. Open networks, real moderation, and even the coveted "nuance" exists, in some small corners. Yes, there's a lot of stupidity too, but the thing about it is, stupidity on massive borderline-unmoderated networks is impossible to avoid. On federated services, it can in fact be compartmentalized to a degree, and if instances really are causing trouble and refusing to moderate themselves, the nuclear option always remains a viable one.
A part of me does wonder if all of these defederated networks just want to be P2P networks but the technology and platform just isn't there today. The most advanced P2P technology I'm aware of is in the IPFS stack, but I'm unconvinced it would be a good foundation to build much on today. One must wonder, though...