Standardizing on a common Community domain as AP extension?
socialhub.activitypub.rocks
ActivityStreams has defined and standardized a set of Social concepts, that has given rise to the Microblogging-oriented Fediverse we have today. It worked great to integrate diverse microblogging apps, model lightweight discussion threads, give Likes and Boosts, etc. It does not work so great when squeezing all kinds of entirely different apps into this business domain to facilitate interoperability. Threat: Stretching the applicability of currently available Social concepts too much results ...

Starting with the posted link and in more recent discussions of Standardising on ActivityPub Groups I have been advocating for some time to make “Community” a native concept of the Fediverse. Something that better represents communities in the real world: groups and individuals with intricate social relationships between them.

Why?

The following toot by @cicatriz_jdr provides one reason:

Nerdy man in shirt with beer in hand on a party explains the Fediverse to a woman.

“”… and these ‘instances’ are all on separate servers, so it’s totally decentralized. but posts on one instance ‘federate’ with other instances, except when they don’t, which basically half the time. now here’s where it gets tricky…“”

And the follow-up by @throwawaygiraffoid is more hilarious even:

“THERAPIST: And those ““instances”” are they ““federating”” with us right now?”

With a community-native fedi you can avoid talking on the INFRASTRUCTURE level…

Fediverse: Peopleverse!

“Yes, the Fediverse is an online world-wide social space where there are numerous communities where you can meet people. They all have different themes and activities and you just join where lies your interest. Or create your own community for your friends and family on whatever has your passion.”
  • smallcirclesOPM
    1·
    3 years ago

    I agree. The Peopleverse should not be any kind of ‘reserved term’ and any online space that serves people well, and where they are in control can be part of it.

    Note that in your division above there’s different interpretations on what “distributed” means. In general you might say that “decentralized” breaks down into “federated” and “peer-to-peer” and the combination of those where both are mixed is “hybrid decentralization”. Also they are technical classifications. Fediverse, while a technical-sounding name (too technical, imho), refers to a certain kind of Social commons (or “social fabric” as I also call it) already.