@FinchHaven@evan I can’t speak for Evan, but that’s not how I interpret the question.
Mastodon primarily operates on the Note object type of Activity Streams. I would imagine in this Fediverse of Things scenario, devices would send out other object types, like Temp readings.
In turn allowing any other software to implement receiving of those particular activities. Creating a scenario where sensors and business logic is independent and interoperable.
@FinchHaven@philip yes, I am strongly positive. There are a lot of cool bots and info panels that share information on the fediverse, and I think it would be great to have more.
@evan one of the things I loved about early Twitter was the connected things - plants, ferries, etc. @andysc had a concept of "blogjects" -> "tweetjects" back then. ActivityPub absolutely can be another network where these things could be useful.
From a pure AP standpoint, it would be interesting to think about how to implement (say) ActivityPub C2S from something like Arduino or #micropython on a small device, or indeed from @nodered as a concentrator of sensor data.
@evan Since IoT is already a total security trashfire right now, I think federating it would only make it worse. So for the moment I'm strongly negative, though open to change once the more important issues of ownership and security are dealt with.
@avatastic@evan Yeah I was thinking the same. There is already #MQTT which is free, open and widely supported. And I fail to see the practical need for #IoT federation at the moment. But maybe I just haven’t thought about the right use cases yet 🤷♂️
(Also #activitypub misses a bunch of features that make it impractical for telemetry uses cases right now, but those are technical issues which can be fixed)
@evan for me it would entirely depend on what the "thing" was and what that thing was doing.
Automated alerts from "things" like weather stations reporting extreme weather, busses and passenger trains reporting disruptions and so on, sure...but if it involves piping our personal data through some corporate black box for analysis/ML/AI, or delivering a "custom marketing experience" or any other questionable or non consensual use of data would be a hard no.
@evan I don't think I want to interact "socially" with any "thing". The best I can think of is something that belongs to the commons. Like I can see an "Eagle Cam" from a national park on Fedi, or like hitchBOT. Somehow, neither of those really fit what I think of when I think IoT.
@evan@telorand yeah, the Fediverse is essentially a "good brand" because it is synonymous with features and people who respect consent. But, respectfully, I'm not voting on a thing that has no details.
@evan Great idea, but cannot see the commercial case, because your refrigerator wants to sell your data to the highest bidder, and that means making it walled and proprietary.
@evan I think I hate this, but I'd need to know more. I don't want my dishwasher to have a Fediverse account, because I don't want it connected to the Internet, in part because I don't want to have to worry about updating and securing the darn thing. Internet of shit indeed.
On the other hand, I could imagine some automated accounts being very useful, such as "is the river trail flooded?" before I go for a bike ride. Or an automated air quality alert for my neighborhood. Just not my stuff.
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