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1. NEETzsche (neetzsche@iddqd.social)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 15:41:02 JST NEETzsche

   • Alex Gleason

   @alex Are you convinced at this point that ActivityPub and other similar federation systems are irreparably inferior to things Nostr?

   • NEETzsche (neetzsche@iddqd.social)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 15:40:59 JST NEETzsche

     in reply to

     • Alex Gleason

     I actually still think that instances built around specific projects is the way to go. Psychologically, I think having more or less closed instances that are there to announce things about your project on your domain name over fedi is an extremely effective way to structure this, and I’m not sure that the key-based Nostr can really replicate that. There’s something about @announce@edgyname.band publishing a link to where to get tickets that @0119673ab393069144b8d91ff5f143ece90bf315d6ca3f08976157d6c9ac7a39 just ain’t going to be able to compete with.

      likes this.
   • Alex Gleason (alex@gleasonator.com)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 15:41:00 JST Alex Gleason

     in reply to
     @NEETzsche Agreed. But better tech will help us move faster.
   • NEETzsche (neetzsche@iddqd.social)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 15:41:01 JST NEETzsche

     in reply to

     • Alex Gleason

     Yeah I feel all of that. I think another thing is the fact that culturally, the fediverse has been completely swallowed up by instance and federation drama. Who defederates who and why and when and this and that. It dominates both sides of fedi, the Mastodong troon side where they have these massive lists of wrongthink instances, and the Balormo rightoid side of fedi where instance admins each have their own style on how they handle it, and everybody needs to have an opinion on how every instance admin moderates every instance.

     My complaints about it actually aren’t the technicals. Really, it works. The technicals are fine and I think that complaints about them are misguided for this reason. Email works. It functions, in spite of its flaws. But the truth is, the culture is garbage. I see the technical argument for Nostr over ActivityPub trivially.

     The bigger problem I see in both Nostr and Fedi is cultural. Both have a very limited window of topics you can discuss and get any traction in. Fedi is dominated by idpol (left and right, depending on which side of it you’re on), anime tits, and tech sperging. Nostr is dominated by crypto wank, cybersecurity wank, and actually I can’t even think of a third topic that gets discussed on it much. I can’t say I’m entirely above it, but every time I try to get into the weeds on anything outside of these topics I get nowhere.

     I think the limited scope issue – a cultural, not technical, issue – is the true Achilles heel of these decentralized services. And I think the solution to that is to, somehow, get people who have something to say other than “it’s da jooz” or “pump my bags uwu” to actually use them. I don’t have an answer to this problem, but I know it’s there and I know it’s real.

   • Alex Gleason (alex@gleasonator.com)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 15:41:02 JST Alex Gleason

     in reply to
     @NEETzsche Yes. Nostr isn't perfect either. But actors are keys, and there is ONE Event interface that encompasses everything, with 7 divine properties: id, kind, pubkey, content, tags, created_at, and sig
     
     There is ONE interface for retrieving data, the Filter. It's not as powerful as SQL, but it's much simpler.
     
     ActivityPub is an amalgamation of decades of indecision, confusion, catering to whims, "flexibility", compromises, and bloat.
     
     {} is a valid ActivityStreams object. Why even have a spec? Furthermore, "actor" can be an object, a URL, an array of objects, an array of URLs, or an array of a mixture of both. It's insanity. It's an edgy teen with a gender problem. Don't even get me started on HTTP Signatures.
     
     I got into this because I believe in the mission of decentralized social media. ActivityPub was the frontrunner, so I didn't think twice. It's a means to an end, but that doesn't mean it's good.
     
     The truth is that the Fediverse is just Mastodon. Pleroma is Mastodon. I don't want Gargleballs controlling our future.
     
     I'm not sure how much users care about controlling their private key. But I do think what I'm building will be significantly better than what we have.