The network effect for #ActivityPub is gaining some serious momentum right now. As more services adopt the protocol, more people, more communities and more content are added to the network making it increasingly more valuable for everyone. This will only accelerate in the coming months as Threads, Wordpress, Tumblr, Flipboard and others federate.
We're still in early innings but there's no way to put this genie back in the bottle. The open social Web / the #Fediverse is going to be huge.
This is excellent news Mike. Following your original announcement many months ago, I actually thought this was the case and created a clipboard about for myself, lolz.
It took a bit, but eventually I figured out that such integration would need to wait for a later day.
I just got around to taking a look at the Fediverse Pasture.
Nice! I got a few of the built-in instances running and then added my own in just a few hours.
I didn't have to change a lot - mostly the same "http" vs "https" stuff that other projects needed.
I've had interop problems with both #Bovine and #Firefish in the past, and I've hardly tested against #Mitra at all. It looks like the Pasture will let me make some progress here. Thanks @helge !
Implemented replies collection. This means replies to Mitra posts can be fetched using mitractl fetch-replies command. Eventually this feature (loading missing replies) will be available in the GUI too.
Profile images can be removed.
Donation buttons for Lightning Network addresses (Mitra is looking for profile fields with labels "lightning address" and "lud16", just like PeerTube Lightning plugin).
Journalists are realising Mastodon and the Fediverse is not so complicated to use after all
As Notopoulos writes, the Fediverse is a better, more user-centric social media concept than the one we currently have, where you amass followers on a single platform then lose them if that platform dies or becomes bad and you decide to quit. Federated social ...continues
How can the one we have be better than the one we have?
Perhaps it would have been clearer if the latter was presented in past tense - the one we had?
#Mastodon_social does not, however, qualify, since it is itself the deprecated model, considering it's just another monolithic silo itself in most respects.
Journalists are also realizing stock Mastodon isn't acceptable either due to a paltry 500 char limit; #Friendica, #Mitra, #Pleroma, #Firefish - much better!
Non-followers from other instances can pay for subscriptions. Previously, subscription page didn't work if subscriber's account was not known to the server.
Post URL can be copied using the "Copy link to post" button in the post menu.
Fixed a number of bugs, including a broken home timeline for newly registered users.
Mitra implements a mechanism for migrating your connections from one server to another, which works even if your current server is offline. At the moment, this mechanism is only supported by Mitra. People who use different software won't be able to connect automatically to your new account, so the more of your contacts use #Mitra, the less connections you lose during migration. It's not very difficult for other developers to implement it though, and it's documented in FEP-7628 and FEP-c390.
For migration to work, two accounts must be linked to the same cryptographic key. To do that, you need to add a public key to your profile, then create a signature to prove the possession of the corresponding private key. You can think of this key as something that represents your primary identity and your fediverse accounts as temporary aliases. Mitra currently supports two signing tools: Minisign and Metamask.
Minisign
#Minisign is a command line tool. It might be difficult to use, but it is secure and doesn't violate your privacy.
Install Minisign. The tool is available in most Linux distros. For example, on Debian you can simply run apt install minisign.
Generate a key pair: minisign -G.
Go to your profile page, click on three dots to open the profile menu and select "Link minisign key".
Tell Minisign to export your public key:
minisign -R -f -p minisign.pub
Copy the text from minisign.pub file and paste it into the form. Press "Generate message" button.
Run displayed commands to create a signature. The first one (starting with printf) creates a file that needs to be signed. The second one
minisign -S -l -m message -x message.sig
creates a signature. Copy the text from message.sig file and paste it into the form. Press "Submit".
Now, back up your social graph. Go to "Settings" and scroll down to the "Export" section. Download both follows and followers lists.
Metamask
#Metamask is a browser extension and a cryptocurrency wallet. It leaks the hash of your public key to third parties, has non-free license and has other shortcomings.
However, it is much easier to use than Minisign. If you have it installed, just go to your profile page, open dropdown menu and select "Link ethereum address". Follow the instructions and approve the signature request. Done!
Migration
If you need to migrate your connections, repeat the linking procedure with your new account. Then go to "Settings", find the "Experiments" section with "Import follows" and "Move followers" buttons, and upload your previously backed up lists. That's all.
In the future more identity verification methods will be added. For example, a client may generate a private key for you, and let you back it up as a passphrase. This is less secure, because you have to trust the server admin to not steal your private key, but it is much easier than using Minisign. Arguably, the tradeoff is acceptable.
Subscription payments can be sent from one instance to another (previously, navigating to recipient's instance was the only way to make a payment). See FEDERATION.md and FEP-0837 for details.
Local timeline made accessible to guests (if enabled in config).
(Fediverse survey post, asking people to click on a web link to a Mastodon post and say what their app does with it.)
UPDATE: Aaaarrgghhhhhhh! 😱 I had a number of people asking me for clarification of the poll, so I edited option wording, but this caused it to reset the responses to zero. I am so sorry! 🥴
The latest figures before I messed this up were this:
About 75% of people clicking on a link to a Mastodon post saw it displayed a normal post, 25% saw it displayed in a browser window.
It actually stands to reason; people often find after they publish a poll that they could have worded a question or option better, then try, then discover that the meaning of the question or option now takes on a new defining intent - that's unacceptable manipulation, whether intentional or not.
When you start a DM, #Mitra won't let you add/remove addressees; last time I checked, mastodon will - it shouldn't that's a potential breech of privacy & security.
Would it make sense for Notesnook to be able to publish notes to ActivityPub? Is that a right use case for it or would it require hacks? What would be the best way to approach/implement this?
From a very quick research, it'd require a self hosted fediverse compatible server. Users would have to sign up or their accounts would need to be created there.
Thank you for putting out that query - short answer is...
Yes. You definitely have a use case here, but first, being just a little familiar with your product I'd like to welcome you to the #Fediverse even though your arrival coincided with the November Rain phenomenon that was much todo about nothing, and in the end, most Twitugees simply returned there after creating accounts here - I'm glad you stuck around! You're product is FOSS, and this is a #FOSS world here in the Fediverse, so it makes sense, this being your natural home and where people can expect to find you :)
Ever since I decided to ditch the proprietary Evernote, I've been using a #Vim Plugin that uploads my buffer to a Gist in an easy peasy way - it would be really kewl if I had a way to send (encrypted or unencrypted) notes to myself as a Fediverse DM, or share some of them with a select group of others in such a manner - Maybe (if it's textual in nature) actual clips I've saved. The graphics, well, if they are uploaded as a graphic that will work too, and they can even be sent to #Pixelfed accounts (if there is a graphics or movie file).
So, you're concerned about having to setup a centralized server or something that your userbase can be recognized on or something? Perhaps like a relay of sorts? I don't think that's the way to go actually. It sounds like a lot of heartache that might not even surivive beyond the intial proof of concept is rolled out - Spam being just one reason that makes the likelihood of failure a distinct possibility.
Here's what I think you can try doing, and it will alleviate any grandiose plans you may have been kicking around - Keep it in the client. A feature mechanism that either lets you clip and post it as an #ActivityPubNOTE to a user's actual instance (server) where they already have an account - You can collect the user's Fediverse account credentials and use that to post to their own existing account - no additional infrastructure is required on your part.
Those posts can be a single post to oneself (a private Fediverse DM to themselves) or it can include a list of recipients - just like any other post you can make.
This will also afford you the absolute maximum in #Spam_control too! You don't have to accept any registrations obo your Fediverse features - you're merely allowing people with existing Fediverse accounts to enter their credentials into your client and then your users make the decision as to whether they want to use your existing store or their Fediverse account to publish the clips to their stores there.
Since you've been around here for a while now, I'm sure you've realized how severely limited mastodon is when it comes to ways you can exploit the existing capabilities in the Fediverse - I've already mentioned Pixelfed, but there's a lot of other platforms that support HTTP signatures necessary for backfills and e2ee constructs; the support for BBCode and/or Markdown; post containing text with character counts greater than the paltry 500 characters that masto can muster, #LaTEX (actually, only Misskey and Firefish support that at this time AFAIK); local only posts (shared only with those who have accounts on the same instance), and a host of other unsupported features in masopub.
I appreciate that you made the effort to address this as an ActivityPub and Fediverse capability, and not simply, "yet another mastodon branded feature". Especially when mastodon won't be able to take advantage of many of the advanced features you already offer that other more capable Fediverse platforms can make use of :)
If you focus on adding support for people to enter their Fediverse account credentials, or multiple accounts like #Takahe and #Fedilab and #Misskey support, Then those are the servers you need right there! The spam problem remains as it is with the particular instances, since they control the new account registrations.
There's also the rapid adoption of #smolweb and single-user focused Fediverse platforms too, such as:
And of course, any platform, now matter how heavy or resource intensive can be deployed as a smolweb or single-user instance (even the klunky kludgey mastodon). And speaking of which, there are several popular forks that don't have these limitations that are very popular like #Hometown and #Glitch-soc, Etc.
There may even be some use cases for #Lemmy and #Kbin too, as link/discussion boards too - perhaps posting from a users vault/store to those platforms? There's a lot of different possibilities but ActivityPub can open up a huge market for you while at the same time Fediverse is exposed to large numbers of people who will discover that they too may have a good use case to adopt for themselves a Fediverse account :)
tl;dr: Basically, yes! there's a huge use case for your thoughts there - and if you're reading this on a Mitra, #Pleroma, Soapbox, #Akkoma, Firefish, Friendica, Hubzilla, or Misskey server, you'll see some very pretty formatting in Markdown - if you're reading this on a regular mastodon server (not one of the really good and popular forks), then... not so much - but at least mastodon does degrade Markdown and HTML somewhat gracefully :)
Well I hope that helps and do feel free to reach out to me via my contact methods listed in my profile or in the Fediverse-City Matrix room, and I'm sure that we can get a few of some of the more prominent Fediverse platform devs to round-table with you for some wire framing sessions.
I'm confident that you'll find a lot of support in your endeavor to achieve this initiative.
Starting with version 1.35.0, #Mitra will support POSTing signed activities to actor's outbox, as described in FEP-ae97: Client-side activity signing. Currently, outboxes are very limited: only Update(Person) activities are accepted. They don't produce any side effects and are simply relayed to followers.
This is just a demo and I'm not planning to develop a client. However, someone else could build it, and in that case I will dedicate some time to improving outboxes and adding other C2S related features.
Extra-features (disabled by default) is somewhat confusing in #Fedilab.
This option allows to enable features that #Mastodon doesn't support (quotes, reactions, submit messages in a specific format, etc.)
But softwares like #Pleroma, #Akkoma, #GlitchSocial, #FireFish don't support (currently) same features.
We plan to use #NodeInfo to automatically enable features depending on the user's instance (ie: software).
This release fixes compatibility with some 3rd party clients, namely Husky and toot. I'm also trying to figure out how to make Mitra work with Fedilab.
It supports monthly subscriptions from any Fediverse user, supports your interactions with any other Fediverse users publishing in Markdown (unlike mastodon) and yes, you can use Monero (XMR) to send tips to your favorite authors in the midst privacy respecting ways possible.
No, not really at all. sounds like you're looking for something like #Hometown or #Glitch-soc -masto forks.
#Mitra is a publishing platform, but it will perform equally well for just #shitposting too if that's all someone is interested in, although I think one would still be better served by masto for that kind of #meaningless_nonsense (it's purpose built for that).
Better still, Twitter!, ("X" now?) I just don't bother keeping up with those toys.