@fediversereport

I think all of the editors and authors of ActivityPub and Activity Streams in the previous iteration of the working group were "invited experts", except one (@jasnell ). One of the chairs (me) was as an invited expert.

The chairs (@tantek.com , @lehors and I) had a "knock to get invited" policy: anyone who expressed interest in participating in the working group was invited to join. I can't remember a situation where we turned someone down.

@fediversereport We also proactively reached out to distributed social network projects and commercial social network implementers. I'd been organizing the Federated Social Web Summit events for a few years, and we'd talked to dozens of different projects, so we had a lot of contacts there.

@fediversereport Finally, we've been planning to work in a "staging process", where ideas and changes come from the developer and user communities, through the Community Group, and then optionally go to the Working Group if they need the structure of an official W3C standard.

@fediversereport I think that's a really healthy structure. I think it's likely that the Working Group will be focused on upkeep and maintenance of the core docs (ActivityPub and Activity Streams), and the Community Group will work on broader applications of the protocol through extensions.

@fediversereport

"there is a good change [sic] that Meta has no interest in actually participating."

***

Probably a good change indeed.

@fediversereport I hope people in the ActivityPub community put the invited expert policy to the test. There's a good explanation of the IE role here:

I would be really surprised if qualified ActivityPub specialists are turned down for IE roles!

@fediversereport Having had some involvement with IETF back in the day, Mastodon GmbH being a member doesn’t really change the power dynamics. When a large commercial player is on the committee, they already have the ability to force an agenda by virtue of having the resources and leverage in userbase to just implement it. If there is disagreement from smaller players, the most they can do is declare that this isn’t part of the “official” standard, which then makes the standard irrelevant. (1/2)

The only way compromise happens is if there are other players of similar size in the committee to counterbalance a large player. If this is Meta and a bunch of nonprofits, Meta either dictates the standard or forks it and effectively replaces it. (2/2)

@slyborg@vmst.io yes that's exactly why I want to bring together disparate threadiverse implementations so that we can petition for changes and make our voices heard as a collective instead of individual software platforms.

The ForumWG has had some early successes!

@fediversereport This is great to hear. I'm working on building a decentralized Meetup alternative for in person events, and I'm planning to add Activity Pub support.

@slyborg @fediversereport

if there are other players of similar size in the committee to counterbalance a large player

Some of us knew that capture through W3C is only a matter of time, so we put a lot of effort to establish an alternative standardization process for Fediverse:

Here's my question though... The w3c rules stipulate that any changes must be accompanied by two implementations.

That's a pretty strong check against unilateral decision-making and introduction of breaking changes from the WG.

@silverpill@mitra.social @slyborg@vmst.io @evan@cosocial.ca

@slyborg @Connected Places If Mastodon really tries to shape ActivityPub around Mastodon and only Mastodon, you can expect quite some opposition from and head-butting with players such as Flipboard, Ghost and especially Automattic (WordPress).

The same who must have pressured Mastodon into "better" support of Article-type objects. That's limited to Mastodon's previews now including the summary as well, but the full long-form HTML rendering with all bells and whistles which not only they wanted is something that Mastodon will never touch.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta

@fediversereport If they are smart they will fix a raft of fundamental UX pitfalls in current ActivityPub by defining a protocol handler for it.

Email needed its protocol handler spec while it was getting established – and arguably still does – and I do think this is one of the ways in which ActivityPub is "like email".

@julian @fediversereport AP is an ugly duckling.

Maybe it shouldn't be a Web standard, but sit apart from (and inter-operate with) it instead. Maybe the right org is the IETF...

@tasket@infosec.exchange an official protocol handler would help a lot. Today there is the option of introducing a web protocol handler but the UX for it is pretty dogshit (Piefed recently implemented it, and the number of dialogues was too damn high!)

That said I don't know if PWAs can register against non-web protocol handlers. That would be useful for sites like NodeBB.

@julian There are several dozens of actively maintained ActivityPub implementations, I think it is not difficult to find two implementers among them, especially if they will be paid to implement a proposed change / extension (as we have seen with the E2EE proposal).

@slyborg @evan @connected-places @fediversereport @ArneBab @alexchapman

@julian IMO there's no reason why a web browser should understand where to open fedi links, without having any other type of app properly address those links as well.

What if someone in an instant messenger or email app sends you a link to fedi content?

Defining it at the system level (again, as is done with email) removes critical uncertainties.

Fedi has other big UX issues as well. Celebrities don't like it here because the TL mechanics make them unintentionally annoying... users follow then later mute them because their posts are popular for a while and we have to see them each and every time they're boosted (or manually silence those posts). Allowing the selection of some transparent algorithms could fix this.

@silverpill In a hilarious twist of fate, this gives (streams) and Forte an unfair advantage. They're nearly identical, they have the same maintainer, but they're two separate implementations, also seeing as Forte uses ActivityPub for nomadic identity, and (streams) doesn't and still uses its own Nomad protocol for it.

Since Mitra appears to implement (streams)/Forte features one by one and cast them into FEPs, that's three implementations already. Two if nomadic identity via ActivityPub is involved. And if Hubzilla happens to have it, too, we've got up to four implementations.

Yes, ActivityPub is only an optional add-on on Hubzilla and (streams), but an implementation is an implementation. And whatever they do on Nomad that federates has to get out through ActivityPub one way or another.

It'd be even more hilariously skewed, hadn't Mike discontinued the five apps between Hubzilla and (streams) on New Year's Eve 2022.

CC: @slyborg @Evan Prodromou @Connected Places @ArneBab @Alex Chapman

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ActivityPub #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra

@julian @silverpill @slyborg I will fight pretty hard against breaking changes in ActivityPub. We have an active network with tens of millions of people and tens of thousands of servers. It's too late for breaking changes and it has been for a really long time. Expect changes like: describing required properties of activities better. How `replies` (and maybe `context`) work. References to OAuth, Webfinger and HTTP Signature.