LWN is now on Mastodon

Drop any unwanted Twitter IDs in the bin to your right.

For those with Twitter as well (or migrating away) I've seen choosing a Twitter displayname that's the Mastodon ID. Also, Keybase once was a project for that but has recently become a bit more sketchy since Zoom acquired them.

I've been semi-watching various projects that cover some of its use-cases:

* keys.pub
* handshake.org
* darkcrystal.pw

But last time I checked, none of them is really "there yet".

I'm okay with that. I think that federating different services with different use models is mess, and ActivityPub is already trying to be too many things to too many people for them to all federate well.

As a simple example, back when texting was done on flip phones with 12 buttons and UIs that only displayed one message at a time, there were usage conventions that matched those limitations - like sending a single message, then waiting for a response, then replying. Then people started getting smartphones, which displayed texts messages like an IM app, and people started using texting like it was IM - like sending each sentence/phrase in a separate message. In the meanwhile people stuck on flip phones trying to read these would get message notification, open it, then before they can finish reading, another notification pops up saying you have a message - dismiss, try to read first message, and get another notification.

And this is a fairly minor change between federated clients. ActivityPub is advertising itself as being good for microblogging like Twitter and macroblogging like livejournal/wordpress and image sharing like Flickr and social networking like Facebook. I can certainly see how there are some useful technology overlaps that would make reusing an existing protocol helpful. And I could see value in special-case adhoc federating - like a SMS-to-email gateway can be useful even if that is not how I would choose to normally interact with those protocols. But the idea of universally federating all these different hosts with different usage patterns and community conventions and hoping to get something usable out of it sounds like a nightmare to me.

So I like the idea of "Mastodon" being the microblogging use-case/flavor/variant/subset/whatever of "ActivityPub". There is still ample federation within "Mastodon", but it is between hosts and clients that are similar enough for the federating to be tractable.

Choose one:

* You make FOSS.
* You have the right to complain when people modify your code to have additional or different features from those you wanted it to have.

This is literally the entire point of the Four Freedoms.

> Why don't use a blockchain and…

To do…what exactly? It seems to me like you're saying "use a hammer and…". There's more detail that is needed here to explain why a blockchain is useful at all (and is something missing in a vast majority of blockchain-based efforts). What about a blockchain "makes sure X of your friends" can do anything, nevermind replicating tweets (on a phone no less)? FWIW, I suspect such explanations are missing because it's because it is all buzzword-based and if they were to explain what a blockchain was doing it would boil down to "and make it computationally more expensive than necessary".

> The other problem of those "platforms" is censorship and moderation, which should not happen IMHO.

I'm not sure what kind of (online) world you expect without moderation, but the power of the Internet allows people of all viewpoints to make their own sites and cesspools (as they may be) to exist in the world (cf. forums, "image boards", etc.). I don't see any reason why a single company has to be the host for all of it unless we're willing to classify them as a common carrier and actually remove their powers to do anything active on the site (including advertisements) other than shuttle bits around. Even in such a place, I would hope to see "private" rooms where discussions can happen without ne'er-do-wells being able to drop in and troll their way around (in any conversation).

As for "censorship", there are no rights guaranteed on any existing platforms to these effects (today). The right to self-assemble still exists and (to me) this includes the right to exclude those from any such self-assembly. Now, I believe that there should be limits to these if there is public money involved, but, AFAIK, the platforms at task here mostly mooch off of business advertising accounts, investor money, and/or VC pipelines. So what basis is there to say "these companies are not allowed to self-assemble" and force them to associate with actors they disagree with and to host content they do not wish to distribute? Now, if you want to nationalize one of them and make a government-backed "national communication site", yes, the powers to say "you're not allowed here" is much harder. But I suspect that such actions would not be seen kindly by "free market" aficionados (which I find tend to overlap with those banging on these drums today but are by no means equivalent).

I would suggest that anyone considering such remedies for their goals consider the other things that may be possible with their means instead of saying "this is a way to get what I want, so I'll use it" and ignoring other implications. I really don't think you want the government to be in the business of being able to say what anyone (companies or individuals) can or must say or host.

Blockchain is indeed probably too big a hammer. But I figure that there are uses for distributed systems (as opposed to federated servers), such as IPFS. I guess that there are such applications for that (there's a chat demo on the IPFS site) but I'm not familiar with that.

Can you define "blockchain" in such a way that distinguishes it from "fully distributed JSON-LD database", which is what this is?

Also can you define "moderation" in a way that explains why you don't want it beyond "I want to get up in people's faces and be insufferable with no consequences"?

Its basically just another place for comments to happen. Similar to how there are comment-oriented proprietary sites like Hacker News.