You know I'm a committed user of the fediverse, perhaps this post will surprise
you. Still, at some point the truth has to be told, before lying leads to a
catastrophe.
I think I've been present in the fediverse (sometimes hosting a pod of some
software and sometimes not) since
First, there is a social network on top of XMPP, which is Movim.
Second, being an “old protocol” doesn’t make it difficult or “hell to implement” to get the same. You, as example, simply cannot use SMTP to make an internet call, because it doesn’t work in real time by design. And even with that you have Delta Chat for instant messaging.
XMPP, as example, has an XEP implementing other range of protocols for this, RTP family, which is already used as background protocol by SIP for communications.
SIP is also getting extended. Some client, such as Linphone, implemented SIMPLE, which is an extension of SIP for instant messaging which could be used as a base for other kind of social network.
I am aware. Was around way longer than ActivityPub too, obviously. You can build anything on XMPP, the problem is that the XEPs compatibility matrix will do you in.
I didn’t say that just being an old protocol makes something hell to implement. What I said is that these specific three protocols are difficult to implement, with all the accrued additions, XEPs (for XMPP), etc.
I don’t think DeltaChat uses SMTP directly. It uses IMAP to talk to your mail server.
Sure. Again, XEP compatibility matrix makes XMPP difficult to use for users. I’ve run 4 different XMPP servers over the last 15 years, I stopped for that reason. XMPP needs some kind of certification, “XMMPv2” or something, to make it sane.
I never SIP is not getting extended. I said SMTP, XMPP, and SIP were designed with different goals in mind and in different times than AP, and their usefulness for building a social network using them is therefore limited.
If it wasn’t, we’d have a huge, thriving social network with millions of users and thousands of instances years before AP even come into existence. We didn’t. Almost every developer of every decentralized social network decided to develop their own protocol, rather than use SMTP, SIP, or XMPP as the base for their social network. There’s a reason for that.
My point is not that these protocols are somehow “worse”. They are okay for what they were designed to do. But they were not designed to be used for a social network (in the sense of microblogging, or facebook-like activities).
And yes, one can claim “e-mail is a social network”, but I’d consider that a disingenuous take in this conversation.
First, Delta Chat uses both because it is a mail client after all.
And second:
What you are doing here is called “guessing the reason because it fits”.
The things you tell don’t have to drive to the other per se. There is no process linking them directly.
That doesn’t demostrate it in any sense.
There must be a reason as you say, but that reason doesn’t have to be the one you tell.
I could say in my own POV, that people like to reinvent the wheel to learn, and in the process they find something that fits in their mind for what they want.
That is my little experience in some open projects. Specifically, after I asked reasons to not implement things in a specific way.
I never disputed that and I am not sure what point you are trying to make here. I explicitly mentioned 50+ other protocols devised by people along the way. Pretty clear that people like to experiment, and that’s awesome.
The thing is, blogpost’s author is making a very strong statement, namely: that ActivityPub is a bad protocol, and that we already had better protocols that could be used for the same purpose:
and
I believe this has nothing to do with reality. Such strong claims (let’s ignore the ad hominems there) require strong proof. And there is no proof provided. Yes, these protocols are used to build federated communication networks of one type or another, but they are not social networks (in the sense in which Twitter, Facebook, or the Fediverse are).
The fact is, nobody built anything close to how successful the Fediverse is using any of these three protocols over decades of them being available.
ActivityPub, while far from perfect (whoever and however defines what “perfect” is in this case), seems way better for the purpose of building a modern social network than SMTP, SIP, or XMPP. That’s simply because it was designed for this purpose.
The author seems to be just ranting because they don’t like ActivityPub for whatever reason; they’d like a more peer-to-peer protocol; they complain about the “mostly south american communists , european anarchists , vegans and other freaks you won’t be friend with in real life”; and they throw around the word “idiot” a lot. 🤷♀️
I really don’t think such rants need to get the attention this one is getting. They come a dime a dozen, my favorite examples:
infosec-handbook.eu, is not online anymore; meanwhile, fedi is alive and kicking)I think the conversation we’re having in the threads here in a decentralized, federated (using ActivityPub, no less!) way are way more useful and helpful than whatever the author of that blogpost wrote. Now, if we can only find a way to have them without first having to deal with low quality hot takes like the ones in the blogpost, we’d all be better for it.
Justifying in other way the existence of different protocols in order to show an example of something that fits the same theory.
And this justification being contrary to your idea of why these exist.
That was my point.
I have serious trouble parsing this sentence.
I subordinated a lot of sentences. Sorry.