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ActivityPub and the End of Walled Gardens, with Evan Prodromou (flipboard.video)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://flipboard.video/videos/watch/b04f64e0-79a5-491a-876f-85e4eca19ab6

There was a time where people couldn’t email each other unless they were using the same email client. That changed when developers came up with a protocol that made it so it didn’t matter if you were using AOL, CompuServe or Prodigy — it just worked. > > The same analogy explains how things work in the Fediverse, an open-source system of interconnected, interoperable social networks. The Fediverse is powered by a protocol called ActivityPub, which provides an API for creating, updating and deleting content across several platforms. > > What does ActivityPub unlock for product builders and tech entrepreneurs? How will social networks without walled gardens change our relationship to content and to each other? Why does any of this matter? > > All that’s covered in this episode of Dot Social, a podcast about the world of decentralized social media, aka the Fediverse. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be the internet’s next wave. Mike is a true believer in the open social web and what it will unlock for how we connect, communicate and innovate online. > > In this episode, Mike talks to Evan Prodromou, one of the co-authors of ActivityPub. Evan is a long-time entrepreneur, technologist and advocate of open source software. He’s also the Director of Open Technology at the Open Earth Foundation.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This will happen naturally if the fediverse grows. It's on us to keep the worker-run instances as viable alternatives so that the corporate players can't take their toys and leave the sandbox without their users having an alternative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We urgently need the ability to move your user account to another instance for that to work. At the moment, it’s not easy to move to another Lemmy instance, I would have to redo subscriptions, blocklists and likely pick a different username.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is now available as of 0.19. Before that you needed a 3rd party tool like lasim.

User data export/import

Users can now export their data (community follows, blocklists, profile settings), and import it again on another instance. This can be used for account migrations and also as a form of backup. The export format is designed to remain unchanged for a long time. You can make regular exports, and if the instance becomes unavailable, register a new account and import the data. This way you can continue using Lemmy seamlessly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Good news, thanks for sharing. Not sure if any iOS apps support it though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I agree with that, but how? I don't think we're prepared for how they're going to try take over or what that's going to look like. If you have insight into that, that would be awesome.

I'm glad I watched it, and I now see that they want it to be a huge city with neighborhoods, which is a great goal. I don't think the huge corps like meta, google, x, tinder, airnbnb, ebay, etc., are going to have the same goals.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I agree with that, but how? I don’t think we’re prepared for how they’re going to try take over or what that’s going to look like. If you have insight into that, that would be awesome.

I don't know about insight but I think we need the equivalent of Wikimedia Foundation that runs these kinds of services. Personally, I find non-profit/coop/both instances to use and fund them/persuade others to fund them. For example Mastodon.social is run by the non-profit behind Mastodon itself. Funding it funds one of the largest Mastodon instances and the software development effort. Lemmy.ca - my home instance is being converted to a non-profit org from and ad-hoc op. I donate monthly to that too. I'm also contributing to the Lemmy devs. I can afford to spare $30/mo on the fediverse and I do. Not everyone can but the ones who can should do it. The more people do this, the closer we're gonna get to a model where it'll cost some inconsequential amount of money for most people who donate - e.g. $2-3/mo. Having a set of financially stable hosts and development should provide the reliable alternative to corpo instances we need.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's a great way to look at it, keep the solid ones running.

How do you feel about the government alerts, schools and universities helping with that? In my ignorant opinion, it seems like those solid infrastructures would help keep it grounded too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I think you're right. Public institutions are likely good candidates for running these kinds of services, whether they're the major players or not. If the Government of Canada decided to run a Lemmy instance, I'd be on it.