This question was asked by mike@flipboard.social on Dot Social’s latest episode about the blogosphere on Fedi.
johnonolan@mastodon.xyz: “we wanted to connect Ghost blogs to each other, but then we discovered ActivityPub”
pfefferle@mastodon.social: “we wanted to connect WordPress blogs to each other, and ActivityPub has been the most successful attempt”
[paraphrased for brevity]
Did you catch the subtext? Both those answers, and my own answer with NodeBB contain the same seed idea… that we originally wanted to connect our software with itself only. We went through years of building a company and vying for profitability that it never occurred to us to work towards cross compatibility with anyone besides out own software.
Then ActivityPub came along and quite literally expanded the potential for the entire endeavour a hundred-fold, because not only are you connecting your own software to each other, but every other ActivityPub enabled software in existence. Blogs, microblogs, forums, image boards, etc. all with a built-in user base ready from the get-go.
It’s no wonder that after discovering AP, it becomes the protocol to utilise.
The problem with starting a new social media app is the chicken and egg thing where people need content (and other people) and content only exists if there are people. Network effects. ActivityPub avoids that hurdle.
So that makes it possible to enter the game with much less capital. That’s nice but personally I’m here for the billionaire-resistant nature of it and the better moderation.
- No one can ‘do a Musk’ to Mastodon and if they did everyone would just fork it and defederate from his instance.
- Without an advertising-based business model we don’t need to encourage controversy and nurture dickheads, we can just ban them. Same goes for fake news sources.
We have the potential to create something far more human and revolutionary than any of the ad-based mainstream platforms.
> We have the potential to create something far more human and revolutionary than any of the ad-based mainstream platforms.
Right on! That’s the refrain I hear a lot from people who discover ActivityPub and then build software for it.
Building something out of principle is a wonderful approach. I hope someday were in a position so that you don’t have to sacrifice principles to make money.
