The problem statement is the limitations and chilling effects of organising meetings, especially of sensitive nature like a Climate March-style of political manifestation, on Facebook, where declaring attendance is tied to your real-name and where propagation of event and posts is limited by Facebook as a way for them to incentivise you to pay for their post boosting services.
To be honest, I think the technology/protocols is already here, and quite solid by now. What is not here yet, and I don’t know if it will ever be, is a user-base large enough to tip the scale in favour of the fediverse (to the extend that people would join because all their friends are there).
I think what’s genius about the ActivityPub attempt is this diversity of frontends, which means more opportunities for people to be sold on something and join the fediverse.
OStatus was only used for microblogging for example. If you weren’t interested in microblogging, you wouldn’t join. With AP, maybe microblogging isn’t your thing so you don’t go for Mastodon, but maybe you like the idea of PeerTube, or of PixelFed, or maybe you already have NextCloud and soon you will get access to the fediverse through that. (I would welcome an ActivtyPub-XMPP bridge myself)
I am not as optimistic as I might sound, but as a strategy, it’s probably the best one.
Me personally, I reckon the single most important reason why these technologies haven’t killed it yet is simply because nobody wants to store random content for random people on the Internet. AP works because there are “supernodes” that are willing to host content for at least some people, and then of course they federate.
I don’t think we should be happy to see single instances with more than 10~50 people in the fediverse, since that’s reinventing one of the problems we want to solve.
There’s work towards that, with distros like YunoHost (and at some point there was talk about a Tails Server Edition), and with some alpha software that appears on F-Droid from time to time that is more or less device2device/mesh networks.
the French are currently in dire need for that. it is just a matter of time when the state will use data from Facebook to crack down on the yellow vests.
post
FramaSoft is the French non-profit behind PeerTube.
I don’t understand what this software supposed to do? They don’t offer many details. Is it another “discourse”? A forum? A new fediverse client?
They published more details only in French. From my fading knowledge of the language:
ce sera une plateforme fĂ©dĂ©rĂ©e (via ActivityPub): Yes, it’s going to be a new fediverse client
Puis, nous avons vu comment les « Marches pour le climat » se sont organisĂ©es sur Facebook[…]Cliquera-t-on vraiment sur « ça mâintĂ©resse » si on sait que nos collĂšgues, nos ami·e·s dâenfance et notre famille Ă©loignĂ©e peuvent voir et critiquer notre dĂ©marche ? Quelle capacitĂ© pour les orgas dâenvoyer une info aux participant·e·s quand tout le monde est enfermĂ© dans des murs Facebook oĂč câest lâAlgorithme qui dĂ©cide de ce que vous verrez, de ce que vous ne verrez pas ?
The problem statement is the limitations and chilling effects of organising meetings, especially of sensitive nature like a Climate March-style of political manifestation, on Facebook, where declaring attendance is tied to your real-name and where propagation of event and posts is limited by Facebook as a way for them to incentivise you to pay for their post boosting services.
This is what “anonymous” and “p2p” platforms have promised us for decades, but have very little to show so far.
To be honest, I think the technology/protocols is already here, and quite solid by now. What is not here yet, and I don’t know if it will ever be, is a user-base large enough to tip the scale in favour of the fediverse (to the extend that people would join because all their friends are there).
I think what’s genius about the ActivityPub attempt is this diversity of frontends, which means more opportunities for people to be sold on something and join the fediverse.
OStatus was only used for microblogging for example. If you weren’t interested in microblogging, you wouldn’t join. With AP, maybe microblogging isn’t your thing so you don’t go for Mastodon, but maybe you like the idea of PeerTube, or of PixelFed, or maybe you already have NextCloud and soon you will get access to the fediverse through that. (I would welcome an ActivtyPub-XMPP bridge myself)
I am not as optimistic as I might sound, but as a strategy, it’s probably the best one.
Me personally, I reckon the single most important reason why these technologies haven’t killed it yet is simply because nobody wants to store random content for random people on the Internet. AP works because there are “supernodes” that are willing to host content for at least some people, and then of course they federate.
I don’t think we should be happy to see single instances with more than 10~50 people in the fediverse, since that’s reinventing one of the problems we want to solve.
There’s work towards that, with distros like YunoHost (and at some point there was talk about a Tails Server Edition), and with some alpha software that appears on F-Droid from time to time that is more or less device2device/mesh networks.
the French are currently in dire need for that. it is just a matter of time when the state will use data from Facebook to crack down on the yellow vests.