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Can ActivityPub save the internet?
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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Fediverse
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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
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I have my skepticisms about this whole thing. While I know the answer is "they will be defederated", what if one of the big ones, like lemmy.world or lemmy.ml get huge, then sell out to something like Meta?
We lost 3rd party apps and we are morning the biggest breakup we've ever had with reddit. Say the server you've had your account on for so long and all your content gets taken over by a giant with strategically placed adds that are upvoted by bot armies for visibility. They may get defederated, but that means Meta just came in and destroyed a huge chunk of users accounts while gaining some ad revenue for a bit until the community dies. Everyone has to actively pack up their shit and move to another instance. I guess the loyalty to an account is less with a lack of account karma so it wouldn't burn as bad.
You would lose all your subscribed communities when you are forced to move out. That would suck. Too bad you couldn't export like a .db file from your account on the way out and upload it to another account on another instance. Possibly some sort of encrypted key so you can auto add as a mod to any community you were modding on your previous account. No clue if that makes any sense. Kinda Like a lemmy "Go-Bag"?
I don't know, just thinking ahead of the shenanigans that's going to happen if this really starts making a dent in huge corporations user counts.
Mastondon does allow you to export your profiles and set them up on a different instance; I reckon some folks will figure out a solution on how to easily jump ship.
I think one limiting factor that has yet to be addressed is that you can move your profile, but you can't move your content. Another is identity. How do you know which Mastodon server has an authoritative (i.e. "blue-check") profile for a given person/entity?
edit: Search indexing is also a huge problem. While it's possible to create a search index over all content local to a given server, maintaining an index over all content on all servers that you federate is a much bigger problem.
Mastodon has the seeds of this authority in that you can put links on your profile and then have them flagged by putting code on the website. So my Mastodon account could have a link to kazuyadarklightofficial.com and the flag proves I own/control that site. So if you know/can determine that site is THE KazuyaDarklight site, then you know you have the right Mastodon account.
I guess for the privacy conscious and content creators, one solution of this would be to host your own instance just for yourself. You control the domain and what's hosted. I could setup @thorned@rose.social and store my content on my server. In much the same vein as custom emails - hello@rose.social could be my email (technically I could have thorned@rose.social but that could be confusing with only a dropped @ but anyways).
Obviously this is not going to be a solution for everyone and it would be good to have a way to backup your content and be able to move it between servers. But in the mean time, it's a workable solution for those who find it important enough to go down that route. 🤷🏻♀️
That's exactly what I did. Have it running in docker containers at a VPS provider for $5/month and ship backups off to Backblaze nightly.
Never have to worry about my "home" instance dying/suddenly disappearing or defederating other instances. I like to self-host when it makes sense to, and this is definitely a situation where it makes sense.