this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Bluesky, which uses it, has been opened to federation now, and the standard basically just looks better than ActivityPub. Has anyone heard about a project to make a Lemmy-style "link aggregator" service on it?

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[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 63 points 1 day ago (3 children)

ha, no.. bluesky is not open to federation. they control the only router and do not allow connectivity to routers not controlled by them.

there isnt a single non-bluesky controlled instance that can federate natively with bluesky.

bluesky is just twitter with a little more user-controllable data sourcing. not that theres anything wrong with that, but its certainly not a part of any federation.

e. suggested reading: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

[–] jackalope@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I believe the "free our feeds" people are working to change this though.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

And they are either in for one of the following:

  • a $30 Million lesson where they learn that they will have to reinvent ActivityPub in order to be "properly" decentralized
  • a rug pull where they come up with a second relay like Bluesky but fork to give exclusive access for large institutions and the enterprise.
[–] MysticKetchup@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

It's ridiculous they were asking for $30m to do something that ActivityPub already does. Wasted money that could have gone anywhere else

[–] jackalope@lemmy.ml 2 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

There are important features that ATPro has that activity pub doesn't. I'd prefer activity pub be the winner but they really need to improve some things. Namely, identity. Bluesky identity is more portable.

[–] dpflug@kbin.earth 8 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

Identity was already solved with Zot aka Nomad, which is part of the Fediverse and easier to implement than ATProto.

It's mostly been ignored because it's just not that important to people, apparently.

[–] jackalope@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 hours ago

It's not implemented in mastodon or lemmy though. I'm not saying it can't be implemented, but it hasn't been in any platform.

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 1 points 34 minutes ago

Nomad is very good at what it does.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

We still don't need ATProto for that. ActivityPods solves that.

ActivityPub itself is built around the principle that the server owns your identity: the best you can do is abandon an identity (i.e, your actor URL) and tell everyone else (via the Move Activity) that you are adopting a new identity.

[–] jackalope@lemmy.ml 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

The move activity ain't a great solution. We need federated identity or else ux will continue to lag. When I want to move servers, I can set the move activity but there's no guarantee my followers will subscribe to the new account. It's bad ux. Mass adoption is not going to happen with that kind of flow.

Activity Pods is cool bit not implemented on mastodon.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

We need federated identity or else ux will continue to lag

What I am saying is that the ActivityPub protocol is inherently built towards a server-centric system, where identities are owned by the server. Go read the spec: even the "Client-to-Server" specification assumes that the server owns the keys and dictates that the client (i.e, users) must do everything through the API provided by the server (i.e, the client's outbox).

Anything that is built with a design where the client owns the keys may even be able to interoperate with ActivityPub, but is not ActivityPub.

Activity Pods is cool bit not implemented on mastodon.

It's the other way around. We shouldn't be looking for "Mastodon on ActivityPods", but "ActivityPods applications that can talk with Mastodon servers", and those do exist.

[–] jackalope@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 hours ago

How do I as a user use mastopod etc?

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 hours ago

There is also the consideration that ATPro has a community that's both larger and less technical, so it would be harder to move them here than the other way around. I'm thinking the direction to go might be ActivityPub servers that can route things between ATPro personal data stores, but obviously I'm still learning.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

good luck to them. the router piece is incredibly top heavy and not designed for horizontal scaling.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yep. What do you think the chances are you could write something that does the job of the router and app view, but in a totally off-standard, more point-to-point way?

In the meanwhile, it's just a matter of bridging, I guess.

the protocol itself creates a barrier to entry preventing other organizations. it puts all the eggs in one basket.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's a good blog post, thanks. I made a quick summery elsewhere in the thread.

It's really unfortunate that we've ended up with two populated protocols for federation, both of which have a major flaw. In our case, it's no established support for moving accounts. In theirs, its a component that's so bulky the federatability is questionable (and no federated DMs).

[–] rah@feddit.uk 6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

both of which have a major flaw

What major flaw do you believe ActivityPub has?

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 hours ago

I mean, it doesn't have to be part of the standard (it could just as well be Lemmy-specific), but no built-in way to move accounts sucks. AT protocol provides a nice little solution for that.

[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

They mentioned the flaws of both platforms.

In our case, it's no established support for moving accounts.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks! Does Lemmy display something when people have their cake day so it's easily visible? Mbin (which I use) doesn't, so I wasn't actually aware until I saw your comment.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 hours ago

Yes it does. You have a little cake next to your username, kind of the same way as on old Reddit.

[–] humiddragonslayer@lemm.ee -1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This is such a well written piece, it's closer to a serious article than a blogpost

[–] rah@feddit.uk 9 points 20 hours ago

it's closer to a serious article than a blogpost

I find it bizarre and plain wrong to imply that blog posts can't be serious articles.

agreed. the follow up is just as good.