Scott M. Stolz

You also have to consider that some servers are very politically-oriented, and if your political beliefs are not aligned with the administrator or community, then you are likely to get banned or if not banned, made to feel unwelcome. This applies to the left, right, up, or down on the Nolan chart. It is their right to do so, since it is their server, but the result is usually echo chambers that repeat the same talking points. If you like to debate policy, then these are not the communities for you.

If you want to discuss different points of view, you need to find a community that actually wants to debate the issues. Or run your own server and find like-minded friends to talk with.

We never know what the future holds. But one of our goals is to decentralize social media. If we wind up with only a few major players, we have failed in that goal.

A marketplace of apps is actually a good thing. Not everyone wants something based on Twitter (i.e. Mastodon, and similar). Not everyone wants Reddit (Lemmy, Mbin, etc.). Not everyone wants a traditional forum (NodeBB). Not everyone wants a blog (WordPress, Hubzilla, etc.). Not everyone wants Facebook (Friendica, Hubzilla, etc.).

One of the goals is to build increased compatibility between apps so that you can choose which experience you want, yet can still talk to anyone else on the fediverse. Some big players will certainly emerge, but I think that there will always be hundreds of compatible apps.

For some reason, links from a Lemmy top-level post do not show up in Hubzilla. Here is the link for anyone who does not see the link.

#^[1](https://forum.wedistribute.org/topic/9/we-distribute-is-always-looking-for-help)

If you are going to encourage cooperatives, you would need one or more organizations that help people set them up. That way people can learn how to start their own, and what it takes to run one. There are legal considerations, such as taxes and registering the cooperative. And some people would need to learn accounting and leadership skills. This is all learnable, but if we want people to succeed, we would need to help guide them.

For those who are not on Lemmy and can’t see the link on the original post:

#^[1](https://theconversation.com/decentralised-social-media-offers-an-alternative-to-big-tech-platforms-like-x-and-meta-how-does-it-work-podcast-249758)

Good to see some recognition of long-form post platforms.

Even though many fediverse users would not be interested on this, I could see a use case for this.

@astro_ray It’s not my profile. I just picked one at random. :)

@astro_ray This is what it looks like: #^[1](https://spacehey.com/profile?id=3178945)

@Daemon Silverstein ActivityPub is mostly about sending posts and articles.

One relatively easy way to integrate ActivityPub might be to have the snippets be stored in some database on your website, and then have the option to create a post or direct message telling someone about the snippet. If the snippet is short, you could include a code block in the post, or you could provide a link back to the snippet on your website.

If you used something like Hubzilla, you could set permissions, controlling who can see the snippet or post. And, although not really designed for code snippets, Hubzilla does have webpages, articles, and wiki page that support code blocks. Although, now that you mention it, we probably could create an addon specifically for storing code snippets.

If you wanted to sync snippets or import between servers or accounts, that would require more advanced techniques, some of which are not really available over ActivityPub.

@Daemon Silverstein What features are you looking for in particular? An interface that stores code snippets and organizes them would not be too hard to build.

The question is, what federated features would you like to have?

I am curious if you are just wanting to make social media post searchable, or making a search engine (that indexes URLs, including public fediverse posts).

For content discovery and importation, you might consider using RSS / Atom as a way if ingesting new content. It is tried and true, and a number of fediverse platforms and websites already support it.

This sounds interesting. I would love to hear about how it could integrate with other platforms.

The biggest issue is economies of scale. Browser engines generally require a lot more coding and maintenance than social media software does (unless you are engineering to be the next Twitter will millions of users). This means more people involved and more organization is required than your typical ActivityPub-related project.

There actually have been many alternate browsers proposed and built, but they usually wind up being abandoned because of the lack of adoption and the amount of work it takes.

And, depending on the type of changes you are making, sometimes it is better to just use what someone else has built and modify it. That is why we have Waterfox, Opera, Brave, and numerous other browsers that use Chromium or Firefox as the base. Why build an entire car, when you can repaint it, change out the seats, add a quality sound system, and swap out the wheels for something nicer?

I do think that there needs to be more choices for browser engines, but I am not sure decentralization is the right word. What we need is more competition, or put another way, more players. The standards are open, so anyone with resources can build a browser. It is a matter of whether people will use the new browsers.

The third logo is Gravatar, which allows you to set an avatar associated with your email. It is mostly used by blog platforms such as WordPress to associate an avatar with your comments. Many other platforms, such as Hubzilla and many forums, support Gravatar.

Currently Mastodon does not support moving your content to a new server, but it does allow you to move your identity and followers to a new server (instance).

Or even change protocols. Mastodon used to use OStatus before it changed to ActivityPub. And some platforms are multi-protocol, like Hubzilla and Friendica. Whether they are compatible depends on which protocols they have turned on.

Or a Hubzilla, Friendica, or NodeBB perspective, because all of those support discussion groups and forums. And you can participate with them over ActivityPub without using their software or creating an account on their server. I am communicating with your using Hubzilla, not Lemmy right now.

I think that it is inevitable since there are different types of users. Ideally, everyone has their own fediverse server (“instance”) on their own domain name that they control. Or, families and small groups share a fediverse server. But most people are not that technical and just want something simple and something that works. That is where larger fediverse servers come in. They are an easy entry point for most people. Once people join, then they can migrate to a small instance, or preferably, start their own.