Scott M. Stolz

And you also have to consider how other platforms treat upvotes and downvotes.

On many platforms, your upvotes and downvotes are not only visible, but sometimes result in a notification alert (i.e. someone commented on your post, someone liked your post, someone downvoted your post, etc.). It is not anonymous at all.

They still have control over their data. If implemented properly, it just changes where there post is created since the post is synced back to their own server to their own account. Regardless of where it was created, it would still be visible on that server since it is a reply to that post.

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)

Federated logins make sense for forums and websites where you have access to content such as PeerTube.

For forums, logging into the forum with your fediverse account would actually be ideal since you can use a forum-style interface to navigate the topics, which would be easier than trying to navigate the same topics on Mastodon. Same thing with PeerTube. You may want to watch videos on PeerTube and comment right on their website without creating a PeerTube account. With federated single sign on, you can post with your existing fediverse account.

We have that on Hubzilla and it is called OpenWebAuth. We can log into other instances and comment directly on their instance as ourselves after logging in.

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)

People are unlikely to switch based solely on “it’s decentralized.” Most people don’t care.

But if a platform has features people want, they may consider signing up. But the real draw is having an awesome community and awesome content.

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

@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?

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

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.

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.

I agree that there needs to be some more “killer apps” for the fediverse for it to really take off. Luckily there are some people working on that. Loops and Pixelfed seem to be some recent highlights and are growing fast. And there are other apps that are being worked on that could change things.

One of the problems is that ActivityPub is somewhat limited to what Mastodon has implemented. A lot of other platforms want to implement some cool features, but none of those are supported by Mastodon. This limits the rest of the fediverse since they have to cater to the lowest common denominator.

It is one of the main reasons why Hubzilla still uses Zot6 as its primary protocol, and uses ActivityPub to communicate with everyone else. Hubzilla has features that the rest of the fediverse does not support, such as nomadic identity, privacy, and access control. And related to that, Bluesky also has features that ActivityPub does not support, or if ActivityPub does support it, is not implemented by the larger platforms.

I think this is the primary reason why the fediverse is falling behind. People look at what Mastodon has implemented and think that ActivityPub is weak compared to Zot6 or AT Protocol.

I think the fediverse will continue to grow, and it would mostly be because of projects like Loops and Pixelfed and other new services. But I think that Bluesky has a lead on us and it will continue to grow, mostly because bigger players with money can afford to actually build on the AT Protocol, which has higher hardware requirements.

Eventually, thanks to bridges and multi-protocol platforms, there will be a multi-protocol network, with big players who have money using AT Protocol, and people who want to start a server on a lower budget using ActivityPub.

From what I read, apparently, AT Protocol does support decentralization, but the server requirements are pretty steep.

To put it in terms we can understand, there are servers and services. You can set up a server, but still wind up using a centralized service from Bluesky. But it is possible to set up competing centralized services so that Bluesky is not the only provider.

But, back to the first point, their minimum hardware requirements are so steep that you have to have pretty deep pockets to fully administer everything yourself.

There is a community called Blacksky that is trying to do this, so they are not dependent on Bluesky at all, yet still use AT Protocol.

Compare this with the fediverse, where you can start up a lightweight ActivityPub fediverse server on a small VPS.

In the short term, I think that Bridgy Fed’s multi-protocol bridge has a better chance of decentralizing Bluesky than Bluesky.