• electrodynamica@mander.xyz
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      2 years ago

      RSS is kind of a shit protocol. They killed Aaron Swartz for trying to make it better. ActivityPub is a more modern version but the development of that protocol was also disproportionately influenced by in the wrong direction.

      • Bilb!
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        2 years ago

        RSS is a format for data (often served over HTTPS), not a protocol. I don’t really understand comparing a data format to a federated communication protocol.

        • electrodynamica@mander.xyz
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          2 years ago

          ActivityPub is barely more than a format either. In fact, the things that are supposed to be protocol are completely disagreed about by all the major softwares, making it useless as a protocol anyway.

            • electrodynamica@mander.xyz
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              2 years ago

              If you are benchmarking, sure, it’s above par. But it had much more promise than that, and perhaps my mourning of it’s compromised potential comes off as dismissive. I was on the standards committee for it and researched decentralized social network protocols full time for many years, so it’s a bit personal for me. If only people knew just how much better things could be. I see it as a personal failure that I’m not better at communicating that vision.

          • electrodynamica@mander.xyz
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            2 years ago

            It does have a few minor improvements. But that’s mostly just because it’s newer. It’s important to understand that the problems with RSS have nothing to do with it being XML. We should set and even demand a much higher bar.

            In data science, serialization matters very little.