Evan ProdromouJul 9, 2023

I am not open to your ahistorical take on Google Chat and XMPP.

Google didn't do anything wrong by using an open standard.

They didn't do anything wrong by building a good interface that people liked to use.

And they didn't do anything wrong by disconnecting from the network when the spam and harassment outweighed the benefit to their users.

We, the XMPP community, failed to capitalize on success by diversifying the network. It's our own fault not enough nodes were there.

Show threadEvan ProdromouJul 9, 2023
If you'd like to draw some conclusions about ActivityPub from this, it should not be that a network should disallow supernodes, but that we have to counterbalance them with a wide diversity of other nodes of different sizes with different value propositions.
Show threadCharles RoperJul 9, 2023
@evan I think people also feel burned by the RSS / Google Reader story. In many ways, that felt more significant than XMPP. I am fascinated to see if RSS reader developers can leverage AP to recreate something like Google Reader. Inoreader already offers the same features and more, but it's a walled garden.
Show threadBen Pate 🤘🏻Jul 10, 2023
I’d expect so, from many different directions. I’m working on something like this - and open source app that listens to both ActivityPub and RSS (and hopefully more to come). The future will be bridged 🤞 @charlesroper @evan
Show threadBob WymanJul 10, 2023

@benpate @charlesroper @evan Ideally, a client or server that bridged AP and RSS/Atom would not, in fact, poll for individual feeds but would instead exploit WebSub (nee: PubSubHubbub) as a means to share feed polling between systems.

See WebSub Spec at W3C: https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/

WebSub

WebSub provides a common mechanism for communication between publishers of any kind of Web content and their subscribers, based on HTTP web hooks. Subscription requests are relayed through hubs, which validate and verify the request. Hubs then distribute new and updated content to subscribers when it becomes available. WebSub was previously known as PubSubHubbub.

Show threadBen Pate 🤘🏻
Yes. And #WebMentions, too. We may need to make another thread to discuss #Emissary but it already supports those. #ActivityPub is actually the sticking point right now, because it’s orders of magnitude more complex. @bobwyman @charlesroper @evan
Jul 10, 2023 at 4:40pmWeb