this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Fediverse

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I just read up on it and it seems good, at least in theory. How does it compare to Lemmy, would you say?

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[–] olivier@lemmy.fait.ch 5 points 1 year ago (20 children)

It's been there much longer, for one thing. But from what I recall, it's been a mess specs-wise. I do especially remember Friendica/Zot's author despairing over how little they followed their own specifications. I'm not sure they're still relevant today

[–] feb@loma.ml 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

@olivier @spitz
You are probably referring to this article. That is in the past. The Diaspora team had learned and the protocol is now far more advanced than ActivityPub.

By the way, it was Friendica and Diaspora that founded the Fediverse. Back then, that was 2010.

[–] deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Diaspora protocol is way better than it used to be, but it can't do half of what ActivityPub can do. Historically, Diaspora's protocol has basically been little more than OStatus with different threading behavior, some addressing modifications, and magic envelope encryption bolted on.

[–] feb@loma.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@deadsuperhero
If I follow the internal discussions at Diaspora, it doesn't want to either and it has been justified in various places that AP is not an alternative for Diaspora.

@denschub@pod.geraspora.de:

diaspora* has no interest in implementing ActivityPub, so I don't know what your question even means.

[–] deadsuperhero@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've read denschub's positions in the past, and fundamentally disagree with him. While he raises a lot of interesting points in his writings on the subject, most of the limitations described have been largely overcome.

Unfortunately, he makes up a significant part of the current core team, and seems to default to hostilities any time the subject is breached.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

he makes up a significant part of the current core team, and seems to default to hostilities any time the subject is breached.

Yea I was rather surprised by this myself. I somehow came across a thread of his where he was outright rage "I told you so" criticising AP/Fedi over the lack of interoperability between lemmy and masto. And while I'm quite sympathetic to the critique in general, it was rather telling, I thought, to see him spend so much energy describing all the "bad things" of a protocol/ecosystem he's not developing on.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Oh man ... that article (actually an interview by the same Sean Tilley in this thread and the founding developer of a bunch of fediverse stuff ... Mike Macgirvin) ... has Mike firing shots at the fediverse all over the place!! It's glorious! I had no idea this interview existed (it's from 2017).

But, from what I have been able to glean, a lot Mike's criticisms track pretty well ... especially this excerpt which, IMO, gets at the heart of what's wrong with the fediverse and what will probably be its undoing:

What’s the most frustrating thing about developing software in this space?

People on different projects tend to refuse to listen to anybody outside their chosen project, or treat them as an enemy, without looking at what the others bring to the table and what core strengths other projects provide and figuring out how to work with them.

As a result, every project re-implements their own incompatible solutions to every federation problem and ridicules any other solutions that others have provided without so much as logging into the service and having a look at how it works. They believe their own project is “special” and someday the masses of the internet will leave the walled gardens and come crawling to their awesome project, begging to use their awesome services.


Just look at how lemmy and mastodon think of each other, as platforms, and how well they work together, despite having so much more in common with each other than just about everything else out there, not to mentioned being bound to a shared fate more than they want to admit.

[–] olivier@lemmy.fait.ch 1 points 1 year ago

To this guy, yes, though less to this article (that is pretty watered-down) than to the regular rants he posted to friendica/zot/... on that particular subject. Thanks for spotting his interview, though, brings black memories

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