reb00ted

We can sustainably, fairly, do better. Let's go.

Tech

By Johannes Ernst

https://reb00ted.org/tech/

  • 2023-05-22

    Meta implements ActivityPub? Not so fast.

    The Fediverse is in a state of (nervous!) excitement about the second leak this past week (after the first one back in March) that Meta is building a “text-based social app” for “creators and public figures”, variously code-named P92, Barcelona, or “Instagram for your thoughts” and which “could comes as soon as June”.

    Why the nervous excitement? Because both leaks state it “will be compatible with some other apps like Mastodon”.

    Many commentators have jumped to the conclusion that Meta will implement ActivityPub and participate in the Fediverse just like other ActivityPub-enabled app (even if it might bring ads or such). I believe this conclusion is wrong.

    Meta is much more likely to use this “compatibility” story as:

    1. a public relations / positioning coup to create good vibes for the new app among important thought leaders (it’s already working, see above!); and

    2. to present itself as the good guy in its fight with Twitter, which is the real target here.

    3. Use it as an avenue to siphon of current (and prospective) Fediverse users into their own app.

    Let’s see what the evidence there is for my belief. I’m working mostly off the more recent “primary” leak source here:

    1. Last week’s leak does not say “will implement ActivityPub”. The term “ActivityPub” does not appear at all. (The March leak does have the term, but it is unattributed and the Meta spokesperson they quote does not mention it.)

    2. The leak does not say “Meta will implement one (or more) standard protocols for connecting social applications”. There is nothing about favoring a standards-based approach in the leak, and certainly not a commitment to it, like they would have for other standards in other areas.

    3. The leak says “Will be compatible with some other apps like Mastodon”. Carefully parse this, specifically:

      • It does not say how it will be compatible. It could be, for example, by using the Mastodon-specific client API, or a combination of client and server/ActivityPub API. That might be helpful to Mastodon (maybe?) but not the rest of the Fediverse.
      • It gives no hint as to what they mean by “compatible”. If you think nicely working, bidirectional exchange of social media posts with everybody in the Fediverse you are jumping to a conclusion that is not backed by what has been said.
      • Why do they say “compatible with some other apps like Mastodon”, instead of “compatible with all other apps speaking ActivityPub”? This sounds far more selective, and subject to bilateral business agreements, than “any app that speaks the standard”.

    4. And then there is this: “Users on other apps will be able search for, follow and interact with your profile and content [on the Meta app]”. Were you looking for the inverse: “Users on the Meta app will be able to search for, follow and interact with any Fediverse profile?” Because it’s not there. Indeed it would have been much simpler to say “Users in all compatible apps will be able to …” but they don’t say that.

    This latter point is important: On Facebook, famously, you can post links “out” to any web page on the internet. However, you cannot link “in” from any page on the internet to an arbitrary Facebook post. Unlike other social networks like Twitter, Facebook is very asymmetric.

    Facebook/Meta has a history of asymmetric implementations of what everybody would otherwise think are and should be symmetrical systems. This very much reads to me like Fediverse users can follow Meta users, but Meta users cannot follow Fediverse users. If they do this, it would wreck the value proposition of the Fediverse, I would think.

    –

    Now these are all leaks, and as such, we should have very limited confidence in their truth, accuracy and completeness, and the accuracy of any analysis based on them such as mine. The proof will be in the app when they release it.

    But: in the meantime, we should be asking ourselves the question: what if Meta does not play a fair game here? What if they implement things to favor themselves to the detriment of everybody else, such a asymmetric implementations, all under the guys of playing nice with open-source apps such as Mastodon? Certainly that’s what we should expect based on their behavior in the past.

  • 2023-04-17

    Growing the Fediverse

    If you owned Twitter, how would you grow it? I think you have basically two choices:

    Increase tweeting and reading per user Increase number of users

    1. You can try to grow the number of users who use Twitter on a regular basis.

    2. You can try to increase the number of times each user tweets and browses others’ tweets.

    Is that the same for the Fediverse?

    Turns out the answer is a resounding No! We have far more options.

    Increase tweeting and reading per user Increase number of users Increase the number and diversity of Fediverse apps New categories of use cases (4D! Yay!)

    1. Yep, we can try and grow the number of users who regularly use the Fediverse.

    2. Yep, we can try to increase the number of times each user posts and reads other people’s posts. (Except that we don’t actually want to do that so very much, otherwise the Fediverse would have to become addictive, and not wanting to be manipulated is one of the things that got us off the big centralized social platforms in the first place.)

    3. We can do more things than just “tweeting” in the Fediverse. Because unlike on Twitter, every Fediverse-enabled app can – and usually does – add new features that go way beyond just posting “What’s happening”. And there are so many of them already! PeerTube for video, PixelFed for photos, FunkWhale for audio, Mobilizon for events, OwnCast for streaming, Bookwyrm for reading, Micro.blog for blogging and more … and all interoperating on the same network. Each new feature like that grows the Fediverse, as I can now do more things, and will if it is easy enough. Each of those tools grows the use of the Fediverse with the same number of users and the same number of “tweets”. Practically, Twitter does not have this option.

    4. Which, together, enables entirely new categories of use cases that go way beyond of what a social media platform like Twitter has ever done (or dreamt of!), or what any one Fediverse app can do on its own. Many of those will turn out to be much more valuable and useful than mere sharing “What’s happening”. And they will be possible because all of those apps can be combined in various ways on the same, free, ad-free, manipulation-free, open, rich communications network called the Fediverse.

    For this to work, however, we need to work to make the interactions between the various Fediverse apps much smoother than they are today. Yes, of course, ActivityPub lets us send notes and likes and comments and various other things around from one app to another.

    But much more can and should be done, such as:

    • Seamless single-sign-on across the Fediverse apps that I’m using. So if I see a Mobilizon event shared on Mastodon, I want to be able to click “Yes, RSVP, I’m coming” and identify myself with my Mastodon-issued Fediverse handle. There is no reason why I should have to sign up for a separate Mobilizon account first.

      The same, of course, should be true about videos, music, bookmarks, and so many other things in so many Fediverse apps. (Before you get concerned, yes, you should be able to have multiple non-connected “personas”, like work and play, in the Fediverse, but we still need single-sign-on within the scope of a single persona.)

    • My social network should come with me when I use different Fediverse apps. So if I decide to start using Pixelfed, I should be able to instantly follow all the photo streams of all the friends I’m following somewhere else, such as on Pleroma or Mastodon. After all, if I’m interested in the photos that my friend Joe shares, why would I make a distinction whether he shares them through one app or the other? The Fediverse can do this if we want to; no other social network can do this.

    • And and and…

    Imagine when data flows freely, data of many, rich kinds, across an open network, directly from your friends to you. Not just some social media data, but most data you care about! With nobody in the middle to manipulate you, or charge you, or advertise to you, or censor you … and no unnatural hoops that you need to jump through.

    We got to work on that last bit, and on that note, I’m very happy that a Fediverse Developer Network is coming together with participation from many excellent Fediverse developers working on a variety of apps. Our goal here is to connect the people well who work on this, so their apps can connect well, too! It’s early days, but very promising.

  • 2023-04-05

    Wish list for Fediverse standardization and other Fediverse technical “commons” activities

    This is an update to my previous wish list, now incorporating discussions of a recent meeting I helped put together of the the W3C Social Web Incubator Community Group (SWIG) and FediForum, as well as discussions in several other FediForum sessions as well as various one-on-one conversations.

    This wish list enumerates the work that I believe needs to be done by the technical Fediverse community to put the Fediverse on a more solid foundation, and make it ready to attract more developers and users. Note that obviously, not all these items are of similar importance and urgency. Note also this list does not include less-technical work, such as on moderation or culture.

    Your feedback – and help making it so – very much appreciated!

    Standards maintenance work on the core specifications

    Fixes to the the core spec

    • According to reports, ActivityPub as-is is incompatible with common shared hosting environments (e.g. typical WordPress host), as it requires HTTP content negotiation.
    • Issues backlog

    A design to reduce certain loads

    • Reduce protocol chattiness
    • Fan-out
    • Video
    • (Not my area of expertise, so I don’t have details)

    Decide on the future of ActivityPub Client-to-Server

    • Split the C2S spec from the S2S spec?
    • Standardize the Mastodon API instead?
    • Invest in convincing developers to implement it?

    Significant extensions of the core specifications with a view on standardizing them

    Improved security and privacy

    • Signed content
    • Private messages

    A standardized way to express terms under which content is provided

    • As I understand it, Bob Wyman calls that a Rights Expression Language
    • This probably should start with a use case collection

    Profiles

    A single-document basic [Fediverse] interop spec, ie.

    • when I have written code for everything it says, my code will interoperate in some basic fashion with all other software that has implemented this document
    • no need to consult or understand other implementations
    • may be quite basic, e.g. text content only, only a minimal set of activity types
    • enables implementors to have a “MVP”-style interop at lowest-possible engineering effort (including the time required to read/understand the specs!)
    • This could be done as a “minimal profile” of a stack that contains a subset of AP [ActivityPub], AS [ActivityStreams], and Webfinger

    Other profiles for specific use cases

    • E.g. propagation of event / calendar invites / RSVPs

    Documentation and test

    A test suite for the minimal profile

    • suitable to add to automated test suites
    • over time, this test suite can grow beyond the minimal profile

    Documented behavior of leading ActivityPub implementations

    • What subset of the spec does each implement
    • What extensions does it implement, and which are required
    • Document the “folk wisdom” how to interact with a given implementation, so not every new developer has to learn everything from scratch
    • Get out of “trial and error mode” when attempting to interoperate with another ActivityPub implementation

    A branding program for products that have passed the test suite

    • As an implementor, you get to put the sticker on your product.
    • In particular, in the places in the product where users “connect” to other servers in the Fediverse, like “Visa” is displayed at the POS terminal
    • I believe this will become critical if/when larger orgs with potentially different value systems connect to the Fediverse

    JSON-LD conformance

    • Tests to make sure implementations are JSON-LD conformant

    Libraries in the major languages

    • Full stack, not just ActivityPub

    User expectations and usability across the Fediverse

    A set of web “intent buttons” for Like, Follow, Post, etc that work across sites

    • like they exist for centralized social media
    • as easy to use for the user
    • we can argue how this can be accomplished technically. I have opinions, but for this wish list, they are immaterial, as long as I get those buttons :-)

    A design for search that meets the requirements of all relevant parties and points of view

    • This is probably far less a technical problem than one of successful communication

    Best practices for content propagation

    • E.g. resolve the “It has 5 likes here but 10 over there” issue and related.

    Improved identity management across the Fediverse

    • Easy-to-use single-sign-on across servers. Use case: I use several apps for different content types (like micro blog and video). Bonus: they all post from the same identifier
    • Easy-to-use persona management. Use case: I have a personal and a work account, bonus if they can be on the same server
    • Identifiers not tied to the domain name system

    Attract more participants

    • Get major implementors involved (e.g. Mastodon)
    • Make the place where technical work is done welcome and the work pleasant

  • 2023-04-02

    The architecture of the Fediverse: network, apps and people

    Since Elon’s acquisition of Twitter, the “Fediverse” has become a thing. A thing that many people talk about, often in nebolous terms. I think we need to be more precise, and to do that, it might be helpful to distinguish several parts of the Fediverse.

    I believe the primary components of the Fediverse are the following, best shown as a layered architecture:

    People

    You and me; sometimes companies

    Apps

    e.g. Mastodon, PeerTube

    Network

    ActivityPub (and related protocols)

    To summarize this diagram: there is a communications network (at the bottom), over which apps can communicate with each other (middle), enabling people to interact with each other in various ways (top).

    Have you noticed that when people talk about the Fediverse …

    • … sometimes they mean the network, as in: “all these apps can talk to each other because it’s all ActivityPub” …
    • … and sometimes they mean people, as in: “We have genuine relationships with each other in the Fediverse because no 3rd party inserts ads and addictive algorithms”?
    • And of course, when they use “Mastodon” as the term instead of “Fediverse”, that’s because in this view, the Fediverse is primary formed by thousands of app instances, most of which today are Mastodon instances.

    This distinction is very important, because the properties of the “Fediverse” in the various definitions, are quite different. For example:

    • If I think the Fediverse is all about people, and how they relate to each other, I don’t really care whether it’s based on ActivityPub, or other protocols (like SSB, or Bluesky, or Webmention, or …) or any combination. In this view, the Fediverse is a “place” where certain social norms are different, including that certain behaviors prevalent in society or in other social networks (like expressions of racism) are frowned upon or grounds for blocking.

    • If I think the Fediverse is the set of all software nodes that communicate over ActivityPub, then I’m baffled why anybody should think some of those nodes shouldn’t be bots, or publish advertisements or special offers; ActivityPub can carry all of those and more. In this view, in its extreme form, the Fediverse could ultimately encompass a lot of internet communication infrastructure, including replacing SMTP for “e-mail”, for example.

    Because of this confusion, sometimes the term “Fediverse” is actually less than helpful. On the other hand, there isn’t an obviously better term (or several; we need several).

    In my personal view, the network/interop-centric definition of Fediverse is more useful: the Fediverse is the set of all nodes that can communicate semantically with each other through common protocols (ActivityPub).

    Given this, it allows many new apps to be built that connect to the same network – the Fediverse – creating lots of new value, as I described earlier.

    And those in turn enable people with common values to find each other, and form communities, that practice forms of interaction that would be much harder on centralized social media platforms. To use but one example, my primary Fediverse account is hosted by social.coop, a member-owned cooperative that formed for the purpose of hosting a social media server that works for them; self-funded, self-governed. Imagine that outside of the Fediverse!

    But regardless of what the term “Fediverse” is ultimately going to end up meaning, whether that’s my preference or some other interpretation, let’s not conflate these different ideas, otherwise all the beautiful opportunities created by the Fediverse to communicate with each other won’t help us avoid talking past each other about the very thing that makes it possible to talk!

  • 2023-03-25

    My wish list for future ActivityPub standardization and related activities in the Fediverse “commons”

    Note: Newer version of this list is here.

    There is some movement in the W3C to perhaps reactivate working on ActivityPub, the protocol that lets Fediverse apps such as Mastodon talk to each other and form a large, decentralized, social network.

    I posted this to their mailing list recently. Sorry if this is a bit cryptic, it was written for a very specific technical audience. I have added a few annotations in square brackets to provide context.

    What am I missing in my wish list?

    Putting on my product developer hat, here’s what I want for Christmas:

    A single-document basic [Fediverse] interop spec, ie.

    • when I have written code for everything it says, my code will interoperate in some basic fashion with all other software that has implemented this document
    • no need to consult or understand other implementations
    • may be quite basic, e.g. text content only, only a minimal set of activity types
    • enables implementors to have a “MVP”-style interop at lowest-possible engineering effort (including the time required to read/understand the specs!)
    • This could be done as a “minimal profile” of a stack that contains a subset of AP [ActivityPub], AS [ActivityStreams], and Webfinger

    A test suite for that profile

    • suitable to add to my automated test suite
    • over time, this test suite can grow beyond the minimal profile

    A branding program for products that have passed the test suite

    • As an implementor, you get to put the sticker on your product.
    • In particular, in the places in the product where users “connect” to other servers in the Fediverse, like “Visa” is displayed at the POS terminal
    • I believe this will become critical if/when larger orgs with potentially different value systems connect to the Fediverse

    A set of web “intent buttons” for Like, Follow, Post, etc that work across sites

    • like they exist for centralized social media
    • as easy to use for the user
    • we can argue how this can be accomplished technically. I have opinions, but for this wish list, they are immaterial, as long as I get those buttons :-)

    A standardized way to express terms under which content is provided

    • As I understand it, Bob Wyman calls that a Rights Expression Language
    • This probably should start with a use case collection

    A design for search that meets the requirements of all relevant parties and points of view

    • This is probably far less a technical problem than one of successful communication

    A design to reduce certain loads

    • Fan-out
    • Video
    • (Not my area of expertise, so I don’t have details)

    Improved identity management across the Fediverse

    • Easy-to-use single-sign-on across servers. Use case: I use several apps for different content types (like micro blog and video). Bonus: they all post from the same identifier
    • Easy-to-use persona management. Use case: I have a personal and a work account, bonus if they can be on the same server
    • Identifiers not tied to the domain name system

    Some of this squarely falls in the domain of this group [that would be the W3C’s Social Web Interest Community Group], some is adjacent. It could be pulled in, or it can be done somewhere else. I don’t particularly care about that either, as long as it gets done and done consistently with the rest.

    Now I’m sure you all are going to tell me why I can’t have all those things for Christmas, and certainly not this Christmas. But I can wish, no? (More seriously, I think they are all essential for continued successful growth of the ActivityPub network as new parties connect)

  • 2023-03-22

    Open networks are more valuable than closed ones: the case for the Fediverse over Twitter and Facebook

    Networks are everywhere, and they are valuable. Consider:

    • The road network. Imagine you’d need a different car for each piece of road. Life as we know it today would be utterly impossible without it.
    • The phone network. To pick two random use cases, without it you couldn’t call customer service or summon an ambulance.
    • The Visa credit card network (and its competitors). You would have to use cash instead, but arguably everybody accepting the same currency forms a network, too, and without that, we’d be back to barter. Which would be really inconvenient.
    • The world-wide-web. Some of us are old enough to remember the times before. No on-demand news, music, entertainment, chatting, reservations, e-commerce and all the others.

    Generally, larger networks are more valuable than smaller networks: if you are the only person in the world who has a telephone, that phone is not worth much. If there are 2 people with phones, you can at least call each other. With 3 people, 3 different conversations can be had. With 4, it’s 6. With 100, it’s 100*99/2 = 4950 possible conversations, not counting multi-party conference calls. This quadratic growth of value with the size of the network applies to all networks, according to Metacalfe’s Law.

    But in this post, I want to look at another dimension of networks that impacts their values, and that is whether the network is “open” or “closed”. There are lots of details one could consider, but for our purposes here, we define a spectrum with two extremes, and lots of gray in the middle:

    Fully open Somewhere in between Entirely closed
    Anybody can connect to the network and do what they like, nobody's permission is required. Who may connect, and what they may do on the network, is closely controlled by the network proprietor.

    There can be all sorts of network proprietors, but for simplicity in this post, assume it’s a single entity, like Meta.

    Here are some examples:

    Fully open Somewhere in between Entirely closed
    The public road system. Roads on a private golf course.
    Buyers and sellers using cash. Buyers and sellers using Visa. Internal company accounting system.
    The world-wide web. Facebook. Twitter. The old AOL walled garden.

    If you had two networks that are otherwise identical in size, structure and function, except that one is open and the other one is closed, which of those two is more valuable?

    Valuable to whom?

    Fully open Somewhere in between Entirely closed
    Valuable to:
    • Platform proprietor: no, does not exist
    • Network users: yes
    		 Valuable to:
    • Platform proprietor: yes
    • Network users: yes

    It’s clear that if both networks produce the same amount of total value, the open network is more valuable to its users (such as individuals and organizations), for the simple reason that there is no network proprietor who needs to get paid! The value entirely accrues to the network participants.

    But there’s more to it: Cory Doctorow recently coined the term enshittification to describe the inevitable march of platform/network proprietors, over time, to siphon off an ever-larger percentage of value generated by their network, to the detriment of its users. So the older a closed network, the less value it provides to its users. (Facebook users experience this every day: ever more ads, ever less genuine human engagement. While, for its business users, ad prices go up.) In an open network, on the other hand, the value that accrues to the users does not deteriorate over time.

    And finally: could AOL, the online service, ever have provided the same value as the open web? Of course absolutely not! Open networks allow many more technologists and entrepreneurs to innovate in a gazillion different ways that would never be possible in a closed network. As closed networks mature, not only do they enshittify, but they also further and further discourage innovation by third parties, while the opposite is true for open networks.

    Which brings us to the Fediverse. Which is more valuable today: the decentralized, open social network called the Fediverse (with its thousands of independently operated Mastodon, and other instances), or the poster closed social network, Facebook?

    Clearly, Facebook. That’s because by all counts, Facebook today has order-of-magnitude about 1000 times the number of users of the Fediverse. Same for Twitter, which has maybe 100 times the number of users of the Fediverse.

    But the network effect is the only thing the closed social platforms have going for themselves. All other parts of the value proposition favors the open social network alternative. Think of this:

    • The Fediverse extracts far less / no value: no annoying ads, no user manipulation favoring the business model of the network proprietor.
    • More functionality: it’s one interoperable social network with apps that emulate Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Reddit, Goodreads, and many others! In the same network.
    • It’s entirely open for innovation, and innovators are building furiously as we speak. By its nature, it’s permanently locked open for innovation, and there is no danger of ever getting cut off from an API, facing sudden connection charges or drawing the wrath of a gazillionaire.

    So by the time the Fediverse has sufficient numbers of users, it’s game over for proprietary social networks. This is true for both user categories in social networks: individuals and businesses. (I assume here that businesses and the Fediverse will find a way of accommodating each other, mainly by businesses behaving respectfully. If not, there simply will be no businesses in the Fediverse.) Individuals will get more value from the open network, and businesses will be far more profitable because there is no network operator to pay and many products and services pop up all the time that won’t in the closed network.

    Note that the critical “sufficient number of users” can likely be substantially smaller than the user populations of those closed networks today, because all value accrues to users and it’s not diminished by value extraction from a network proprietor. For many of my own use cases, in many niches the Fediverse has critical mass today already.

    Can the user advantage be overcome across the board? We will have to see. But if we add up just numbers of active users of organizations that have publicly announced Fediverse plans as of the date that I’m writing this, or even have products already in the market – Flipboard, Medium, Mozilla, Tumblr, Wordpress and more – we’re already in the high 100’s of millions.

    Those numbers look awfully close to the user numbers necessary to overcome Metcalfe’s Law.

    tldr; The time to take the Fediverse seriously, for individuals and businesses, is now. The value of the Fediverse for everybody is much higher than the value of any closed, proprietary social network – other than the proprietary social network companies themselves. And we won’t cry for them very much.

    Note: FediForum is next week, where we’ll discuss this.