#ActivityPub dev tip of the day: An inbox (or outbox) is not a queue. An inbox is reverse chronological (LIFO-ish) and maintains long-term references to items. A queue has FIFO behavior and items are dequeued/removed for processing. AP is difficult enough without equating the inbox concept with MQ middleware (which could be a useful internal implementation technique).
I've been thinking a bit about this post regarding #Mastodon's responsibility to be compatible with the #threadiverse (#ActivityPub thread aggregators like #Lemmy & #Kbin). Right now, a thread from Lemmy or Kbin usually federates to Mastodon with truncated text and a link to the actual thread. However, many want Mastodon to be more compatible with threads so that the people over on Mastodon interact with the threadiverse more.
I was initially in agreement as a Kbin user. But having given it some thought, I think this is an unwise approach that'll only serve to overcomplicate platforms on the #fediverse. Yes, people on Mastodon should promote other parts of the fediverse (and vice versa), but complete interoperability shouldn't be expected of every platform.
As much as many would like it, you can't have long-form video from PeerTube, images from Pixelfed, threads from Kbin, blogs from Writefreely, etc. all neatly fit in a microblog feed. These are different formats made for different platforms, and the people making them are expecting them to be interacted with in completely different ways. When someone makes a thread in a Lemmy community, they're probably expecting that the people who are going to see and interact with the thread are people that want to see threads and are thus on a Lemmy instance (or another thread aggregator). If someone from Mastodon were to interact with it as if it were a microblog post, there'd be a big mismatch. People interact with microblogs differently than they do with threads — that's why they're separate to begin with. You don't see everyone on Twitter also wanting to use to Reddit because people who want microblogs don't necessarily want Reddit-style threads, and vice versa.
The other option, then, is to separate these different formats into different feeds or otherwise make them clearly distinct from one another. Kbin does this by separating threads and microblog posts into two tabs. While you can view both in the "All Content" tab if you'd like, they're styled differently enough that it's very clear when you're looking at a thread and when you're looking at a microblog post. This distinction lets users treat threads like threads and microblog posts like microblog posts, which is really helpful since the two formats serve different purposes and have different audiences. This option — clear distinction — is a great way to solve the conundrum I've been talking about… if your platform is meant for viewing all these different kinds of content to begin with.
And that's what it really comes down to imo. Mastodon is a platform for microblogging. Most people go to Mastodon because they want a Twitter alternative, not a Twitter alternative that's also an Instagram alternative and a Reddit alternative and a YouTube alternative. Even if you put these different content types in separate tabs, it would inevitably make things seem more confusing and thus raise the barrier of entry. Add a Videos tab to Mastodon to view stuff on PeerTube, and people are inevitably going to go, "Wait, what's this? Is this like YouTube? I thought this was just a Twitter alternative! This all seems too complicated," even if you tell them to ignore it.
It's probably best to leave Mastodon as it is: a microblogging platform that has some limited federation with other formats. The way Kbin threads currently display on Mastodon is fine. In fact, when I post a Kbin thread, I'm expecting it to be viewed via a thread aggregator. If people on Mastodon were part of the target audience, I would've made a microblog post.
Now, if you want to make something that lets you view everything on the fediverse via different tabs, feel free. As aforementioned, Kbin supports both threads and microblogs, though it comes with some challenges (e.g., trying to fit magazine-less microblog posts into Kbin's magazine system). However, this doesn't mean every platform on the fediverse needs to seamlessly incorporate everything else. I'd love people on Mastodon to promote and even try out Lemmy & Kbin more, but that doesn't mean Mastodon needs to also become a thread aggregator.
This isn't a hurdle because people typically aren't going to the fediverse with the idea of "I want a single app for all my social media." That's not how social media works outside the fediverse, so it's not really going to be a surprise that the Twitter replacement is a Twitter replacement and not one for 5 other platforms. If someone really wants to view Reddit-style threads, they're straight up better of making an account on a different platform (just like they would make a different account for Reddit) because Mastodon is a microblogging site.
Even the best attempt to incorporate all these different types of content into Mastodon is going to further complicate the platform and make more people dismiss Mastodon as too complicated of a Twitter alternative. This isn't a situation where there's no harm at best. And the potential benefit? Lemmy comments having the occasional Mastodon user?
Mastodon itself is a good enough introduction to ActivityPub without needing to make it support other things. It shows how people on different servers can share & interact with a pool of media through the same protocol. When people learn about other platforms on the fediverse, they can go check those out. Just promoting the platforms will do the job fine without complicating people's entry into the fediverse.
@Gordon_Freeman There isn't a crosspost button, but if two threads are similar, they'll show as crossposts of each other. I'm not sure exactly what the criteria are, but from what I can gather, two link threads will show as crossposts on Kbin if they have the same link. Otherwise, they need the same title (and maybe the same photo?).
@Gordon_Freeman Agreed, though it would be cool to have a button that you can click to make a crosspost. Maybe it'd send you to the thread creation page with certain things filled out to make it a crosspost.
What concerns me about the #fediverse / #acrivitypub from a user‘s perspective, is the inflation of identities that will occur as soon as you want to use feature that the platform you started on does not offer.
I am aware that this also can happen, when you use closed services, but …
A) this on of the things that make Google or Meta attractive.
B) federation to me implies the integration of several services under one identity.
So, is a #FederatedIdentity something that is being considered?
@iamlayer8 the main issue that prevents this from being the case is that Mastodon (and the services that preceded it in some part) unified the client and server parts of ActivityPub.
Ideally an ActivityPub server should be able to accept multiple types of activities for different purposes and different clients can make use of different resulting objects. Ie, a Mastodon client can display textual objects in a twitter like format, a Pixelfed client would display image objects, etc.
@Damaskox I get them every now and then trying to upvote, downvote, or boost something, but it's extremely random. Usually, I find that going to the activity tab and upvoting from there helps
@Damaskox
Yes I do, just like kbin seems to forget my login often. Looks to me like it needs to reminded you're logged in and therefore can up/downvote without errors.
Misskey, the fediverse microblogging platform that’s popular in Japan, has provided a recap of 2023, and it has been a big year for Misskey. The platform saw massive growth, the main server Misskey.io incorporated itself, and a number of new features and performance improvements.
The flagship server Misskey.io grew from 500 daily active users in January to 28k daily active users in December. They grew from around 20k registered accounts at the beginning of the year to over 400k accounts now. As with most social networks, growth happened in bursts, with a major increase in March and July, while the other months grew much slower.
With the growth came other changes as well: the server misskey.io incorporated itself, and main developer Syuilo became a director of the organisation as well. Donations and sponsorships also grew significantly. For the future, Syuilo says that “there are limits to relying solely on donations from everyone, so I would like to find a way to monetize the project.”
Misskey Pages allow users to create custom web pages on the platform that they can share. It can be programmed as well, and Misskey created a custom scripting language AiScript so people can safely add code to their Misskey Pages as well.
Other updates include refactoring of code and performance improvements, more information on that can be found here and here.
Misskey’s vision for fediverse servers is visible in their updates on moderation; every user can be assigned different roles that control permissions of the user in detail. In the update they say that this has greatly affected the operation of the Misskey server. This implies a vision for Misskey of larger servers, with a more complex structure for administration and moderation.
The future plans for Misskey focus heavily on the playful aspect of social communities: two games will be added that can be played on Misskey; Misskey Room as a way to play with other users in 3D space, as well as a chat interface. This puts Misskey further it’s unique place in the fediverse.
