this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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What is the most important unanswered question about the Fediverse? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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There are a large number of unanswered questions about the Fediverse. I don't just mean questions that users may have, but questions for which no suitable answer exists yet. Some are extremely abstract and existential like "will the Fediverse survive the next decade?" Other questions are very concrete like, "What is the copyright status of a federated post?" or "What are the moral implications of federating content that may be harmful or recording a crime?"

I wonder, for those of you who stay up nights thinking about the Fediverse, which question is the most important to you?

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[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

ATProto is what Bluesky uses, right? It'd be nice if someone could give a quick summary of the features and what differentiates it compared to ActivityPub.

It seems like it would be a pretty big task to switch from ActivityPub, because each fediverse project would have to implement that independently.

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

There are a number of features that make them different, but the major one that makes me favour ATProto is that it gets around the centralization problems of the Fediverse.

I'm @savvywolf@pawb.social on ActivityPub, this means:

  • My identity is linked to pawb.social. That means that if someone falls out with my admin over something, I get blocked as fallout.
  • Likewise, if my admin falls out with someone else and blocks them, I have to follow those decisions.
  • My data is stored on pawb.social. That means that if the server gets shut down, even with warning, poof! My data is gone.

In addition, there isn't any way to transfer data between ActivityPub instances. Sure you can set up redirects in Mastodon, but there's no way to actually transfer information or history.

There's really no reason these three things all need to be managed by the same entity (pawb.social in my case).

Under ATProto:

  • My identity is handled by DNS. I control my domain name, so I control my identity and reputation.
  • While this isn't battle tested yet, ATProto (or at least Bluesky) has much better support for blocklists. Individual users can create their own blocklist and share them with others. So Bluesky itself doesn't need to ban other instances unless they start doing really illegal things.
  • My data is stored on Bluesky's servers, but I can easily move it to another server if I need to without breaking anything (I think? ATProto nerds, is this true?).

If I don't like the way Bluesky is going I can just... Leave. I can move my data to another platform and log in to another frontend. All without my followers even noticing a difference or losing any content.

It also has some cool features. For example, there's this thing which allows you to just set up pronouns so that they are visible on your own profile to other people that use the list. https://bsky.app/profile/pronouns.adorable.mom All implemented without any protocol extensions.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

Dumb backend, smart frontend?

Basically, have hosts replace services like AWS but don't make them have any power (except for choosing if they agree to host NSFW content or not) and make the data they host public so anyone can develop a frontend to access it, a single account giving you access to everything, administer your own experience, mods have control over the communities they moderate but there's no admin that can decide you don't have access to a big chunk of the content because they don't want to be federated with certain instances.

[–] AsudoxDev@programming.dev 1 points 3 weeks ago

FYI: There is a draft about implementing DIDs in ActivityPub: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/issues/209

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

You can also run your own instance.