Mainstream adoption of ActivityPub vs. DIY indie hacking
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@hamishcampbell@mastodon.social recently made a statement that got me thinking about our place in the open social web, and the direction it's going.
He says to @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org and @evan@cosocial.ca re: SXSW
> #FediverseHouse this feels like an irrelevant echo chamber, I really miss the grassroots #DIY that built this space in the first place. This #maistreaming is too much noise vs signal... currently the grassroots #DIY space is a hollow shell
(two posts combined)
That immediately got me on edge as someone new to ActivityPub in 2024. Does this mean I'm "mainstream", and somehow "bad"?
Mainstream adoption is good and a step in the right direction. I personally think ActivityPub isn't ready for general mainstream consumption, but we as a group are rapidly closing the gap and I'd much rather continue building momentum instead of waiting for the opportune moment.
Here's the hot take that I was going to originally write, but thought came off as too combative:
> It sounds like you feel like ActivityPub development only counts when you're toiling away in obscurity.
As someone who's hacking away on a platform that hasn't been "mainstream" for over a decade (forum/BBS software), I bristle at the notion that what I do doesn't count as grassroots or DIY. You don't have to be the perpetual underdog to do good in the world.
I might be wrong, but it sounds like Hamish feels like big players are coming in and taking the ball away... that big players' clout and presence takes away from the attention that smaller DIY projects receive.
Maybe... but if the fediverse is 100x larger with a big player, and they take 99% of the eyeballs, have they really taken anything away from you?
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I know the initial brief was not for nodebb to replace other ActivityPub clients (like Mastodon and Lemmy.)
But theres some things Im not keen on in Mastodon, and Lemmy is annoying. Although good for searching, it is far from ideal in other respects.
So there is a gap in the market for a ActivityPub system based on Node (and not an exotic combination of other languages)
So, theres a good opportunity for Nodebb to fill that gap! -
Are you in Austin at the Fediverse House?
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This has been an attitude more generally on Mastodon over the 3 years that I've been there. There's this deep undercurrent of "finally, we're getting the attention we deserve" but also "shut up and let us talk". It seems that people who are used to being the only people in the room are craving an audience, not people actually using their toys.
There's a group of people -- developers or otherwise -- that saw the fediverse as their private little sandbox, and openly resent anyone else coming into the space, or at the very least, anyone else coming into their space and not following their rules.
It's been a significant blocker to adoption for the platform, and for the fediverse as a whole.
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@julian depends on the player, and depends on which people leave or get pushed out as a result.
personally i am not here for "eyeballs", i'm here for whole-ass people 🫠
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@julian depends on the player, and depends on which people leave or get pushed out as a result.
personally i am not here for "eyeballs", i'm here for whole-ass people 🫠
@julian not to buy into the "grassroots vs mainstream" narrative per se, but the emphasis on mainstream adoption at this stage is imo misplaced and only serves to reinforce broken patterns of "social media" and its consequences over the past 15-20 years. asking people to make the leap right now is going to leave a lot of people disappointed. we need to offer more compelling reasons to be here, and a genuinely better experience for multimodal communications that aren't shoved into the square hole
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Are you in Austin at the Fediverse House?
@reiver@mastodon.social no, I am not, I have just been following the
fediversehousehashtag
