Jack Dorsey skipped ActivityPub, built AtProto, lost Twitter, funded Bluesky, watched it become a company with VCs and a board, said it was "repeating all the mistakes," left, and now funds Nostr.

@maswan @cwebber @thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia ActivityPub is mostly fine with decoupling domain name and identity. From my understanding, you could have an activitypub account on a self-hosted server and have multiple domain name have webfinger software point to it and that account would have multiple handle.

@gkrnours @maswan @thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia ActivityPub is mostly oblivious to the concept of "instances". It's more actor model, and more like sending mail, and less like villages. Heck, ActivityPub doesn't even have webfinger. Technically, sharedInbox doesn't even need to be on the same domain!

Both instances-as-important and webfinger are activitypub-in-practice rather than activitypub-as-written. But maybe that's immaterial. "The purpose of the fediverse is what it does"???

@thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia When I talk about governance, the "disappearance" of a corporation is the least of the problems. The problem is what that for-profit corporation can do to the network while it retains total control. As long as the code doesn't officially transfer its governance to the community in the form of a non-profit organization or something similar, the technology will continue to be controlled by a corporation. Even with the best intentions of the contributors (which I believe are truly very good), that's the reality.

@skarnio @mastodonmigration @baralheia but there is code, that does the same thing that is owned by a community: https://blackskyweb.xyz

Bluesky isn't the only group building the protocol layer parts. The spec is going to the IETF for standardisation, did:plc is being transfered to a swiss association.

So bluesky has as much control over the network as we let them have.

@thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia Great. Our main problem isn't technology, but politics... the more independent we can be from corporations, the better. I'll look into this information. Thank you!

@gkrnours @maswan @thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia Still, if I am going to sad-cassandra-complex about it, which of course I do all the time, I do think it would be completely possible to build a social network system that's even *more* flat than AP-in-practice is today, and I think some decisions along the way, while made for good reasons, ultimately make that harder.

But, as @vv reminded me the other day (about @spritely actually), "You aren't going to have control over when people start using your tools and when they do, you will always feel like you weren't quite ready for that moment."

Which is universal... not just on the fediverse, but the ATmosphere too.

I have more to say about this soon. It's been over a year since I wrote my pieces analyzing how decentralized the Fediverse vs Bluesky/the ATmosphere is, and it deserves a revisit. Ultimately, I think my core analysis was fully correct, but the ecosystems have changed.

@skarnio @mastodonmigration @baralheia yeah, and it's a very niche form of political tribalism around protocols, which in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter to every day people.

Protocols are just a means to an end user product that's simple and joyful to use.

There's interesting design choices on both sides, but at the end of the day, it's better to have two open protocols collaborating and being up against walled garden tech giants together.

Like, the repayable repository structure in AT Protocol, or the OAuth profile that they use would be s huge win to the ActivityPub ecosystem to adopt. The "apps are separate from identity and data" is also a vision in the original spirit of ActivityPub (client to server)

I'm just so sick of folks trying to divide what are otherwise two similar projects, where each project could learn a lot from esch other.

@cwebber @maswan @thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia @vv @spritely from my point of view, which is a bit naive and superficial, more flat mean more message between actor which is less efficient. Meanwhile, I think the current design could "proxy server" with little work. Instance that would provide a handle with a domain, forward message and little more. Then specialized light-weight server, easier to self host, could take advantage of that.
I need to write a PoC for that

@gkrnours @cwebber @maswan @mastodonmigration @baralheia @vv that would probably be an interesting prototype!

@vetehinen @mastodonmigration @baralheia @skarnio

ActivityPub is also a standard with a few dominant players involved, who get to decide things for the rest of the network. The difference you think is here really isn't.

There's like 20-30 people that work on standards in ActivityPub, maybe 200 implementers I'd guess.

Like, it's a small community, and some people/organisations have significant power in the dynamics of this network.

@dansup capital corrupts. Nearly every damn time.

@thisismissem @skarnio @baralheia

Again, apologies for not following all of this discussion at a detailed technical level, but reject the accusation of protocol tribalism as it implies irrational advocacy of one system over the other.

The goal here is to understand the way two different networks scale, and whether from an practical standpoint each enables power sharing sufficient to actually be resilient to a principle bad actor.

1/

@vetehinen @thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia There is a very big difference between the W3C and its relationship with the AP community and the Bluesky Social PBC.

@thisismissem @skarnio @baralheia

The assertion has been made that AT Protocol exhibits quadratic scaling amoung independent nodes. If this is the case, it is very hard to see how it can scale 'wide.' And, we seem to be seeing evidence of this as people like Blacksky attempt to do so.

The reason for concern about this is the political environment we live in where bad actors can, and do, acquire control of social media networks and assert political influence thereby.

2/

@mastodonmigration @thisismissem @baralheia Well, and more likely, what happens if the PBC can't find a business model and shuts down?

@skarnio @vetehinen @mastodonmigration @baralheia but as we've previously discussed, AT Protocol isn't going to live with Bluesky PBC, it's being standardised at the IETF, where a working group is in the final stages of being setup.

Also, historically, ActivityPub was based on a technology Evan's startup created, and it only later became ActivityPub through standardisation efforts.

@thisismissem @mastodonmigration @baralheia Reducing this important debate to "political tribalism" is as dangerous as considering that because it "doesn't matter to ordinary people," it shouldn't be addressed. If that were the case, neither Fediverse nor the AT protocol would exist, since decentralization isn't even an issue for "ordinary people." I don't think about the ingredients in my food every day, but I trust organizations that fight against the rampant use of pesticides and promote healthier alternatives. That's where we meet. I completely agree that fundamentalisms are harmful to any process, but we cannot ignore fundamental issues such as the centralization of power in the hands of a corporation over an alternative that presents itself as free. We are talking about a new model of online social communication for the world, so all aspects are important, and from my point of view, since I'm not a developer, the political aspect is the most important. If the Activytpub governance model needs improvement, let's criticize and fight for it publicly as well.

@mastodonmigration @skarnio @baralheia AT Protocol doesn't exhibit quadratic scaling in practice.

You can configure any network in its least optimal form and therefore create inefficiencies.

It's just like AT Protocol's properties applied to ActivityPub create some really weird outcomes. Trying to deploy AT Protocol as you would ActivityPub is ignoring the fact that these protocols have different network topologies.

We can find ways that AP, too, performs horribly.

@skarnio @vetehinen @mastodonmigration @baralheia

With all due respect to everyone in this thread, we're just wasting time with these conversations that would be better spent on pushing the fediverse forward and making it more welcoming to everyone.

Yes, I am just as frustrated that a VC-funded fediverse competitor has gained so much more traction, but we're not going to catch up unless we acknowledge and fix the problems keeping, and pushing, people out.

@thisismissem

@timbray @mastodonmigration @baralheia by the time PBC shutsdown, we should be well along the way to standardisation at IETF, and more players in the ecosystem means less importance of one entity.

What would happen if Mastodon gGmbH/Inc disappeared tomorrow? It'd significantly hurt the fediverse too, because of how much of the fediverse is concentrated there.