With quote posts we are able to shape our own micro #wiki's within our timelines and those of others, buld social graphs (technosphere) and navigate social fabric (socioshere) ..
What might we be be able to weave if the #ActivityPub #LinkedData aspects were used to their full extent and benefit?
Social semantic fabrics.
Oww, that is interesting. See here what brought me to the #ActivityPub fediverse ages ago on IT timescales..
Read the blog post, and these are astute observation and valuable way of thinking about the networking environment, both offline as well as online, and how they interact together, how they intertwine. #SX envisions a peopleverse (which is a concept, not a name), a hypothetical space where the interaction is seamless and technology unobtrusively serves our day to day needs.
#PersonalSocialNetworking is a powerful instrument to design better social experiences.
Often the talk of the town in the #ActivityPub dev circles is about some feature or other, an app functionality and the extent to which it can be made interoperable. Technical implementation details dominate the discussion. And drama ensues on the broader #fediverse if social impact and other externalities are overlooked in an app design.
When comparing #microblogging we have today, it really is like sticky notes on the fridge, which fall off or are removed by people. And we project all communication modes onto them.
So the area where my plans go I call "Residential social networking", geo-fenced but inter-connected social networking circles that cover a city, town, or rural area, and which enable their residents to not only create content on the network, but the dynamic apps and services based on local needs that exist in the area. The intent of a residential social network is to engage people *offline* and in activities that support the local economy. Or rather strengthens the Circles of Sustainability in SX terminology:
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#circles-of-sustainability
And all this should be a relatively low-code affair, directly accessible already for a first-time dev. This requires having a mature open standards based healthy technology foundation and thriving ecosystem.
I am a developer, though with rusty coding skills these days, and I might have started a fedi app design in 2018 or so. But this would not have led to the desired outcome, just throw one more app-centric software in the mix.
Oww, that is interesting. See here what brought me to the #ActivityPub fediverse ages ago on IT timescales..
@strypey @FinchHaven @naturzukunft2026
No, not overlooking the forest, but forgot the quote..
You:
> IIRR the Semantic Web was shouldered aside by "Web 2.0" (AJAX, pseudo-REST, etc), with the idea that we'd all use platforms in place of richer semantics. We all know how that turned out ; )
This is not how I remember it. Semantic Web wasn't "shouldered aside". At the time of the hype cycle the corporate world was full on board. It was more Semantic Web that spectacularly failed to deliver (against the expectations of the hype cycle) and in many areas was a solution in search of a problem. And pragmatic developers refusing to use something they felt was overengineered, and that coincided with the same feelings around XML which was overused in areas where it shouldn't.
@strypey @FinchHaven @naturzukunft2026
For the sake of further clarity I should point to your starting post and this text:
> we need domain-specific applications that leverage ActivityPub’s full semantic potential
And remark that in my opinion and by observation, tapping the sign "Reminder: #ActivityPub is #JSONLD, folks!" isn't enough. Much more is needed than pointing to the #OpenStandards to win back developers minds to adopt #LinkedData. There is a high reluctance and resistance to adoption that must be overcome.
Referring again to that adoption chart I drafted the other day - which is about #SolidProject, but this is where LD is strong(est?) today - "build open standards, and they will come" isn't going so well. I hope that changes, as I have always been a fan of the *notion* of the semantic web. Yet in role of a technology decision maker, not ready to bet on it for a social networking environment.
@johannab No, not at all snarky. 💕
What is so interesting is to discern between the technical and social, and I think that most people have a very functional-technical perspective of what it means to communicate online, so to say. Consider it merely as extra channels to interact with others, more choice to connect.
But of course our online social network is much more than merely a channel, and we have to 'project our social' somehow over these thin copper and fiberglass wires, while we try to make sense and interpret the social signals that come from other remote places.
I think we underestimate the impact of communicating online, and the narrow 'social bandwidth' that our current networking tools support. Then we translate online situations to how we would behave offline and get wrong expectations, misconceptions, and subequenctly miscommunications.
We are still all youngers online, still all learning the ropes, while we do social networking offline for 1,000's of years already.
@johannab I for my part are very happy you find this interesting. Addressing the social side is not the most popular among developer-heavy crowds :)
Feel welcome to participate in our matrix channels or forum. The latter serves as a note-taking tool, or - under SX definition - as a commons based prosperity vault, aggregating value over time as people leave their 2 cents.
Note the SX Mindfulness principle of Social coding commons.. the movement moves, or it pauses awaiting value aggregation by the next participant. Timeless. Everything hinges on proactive participation (and on the basis of intrinsic motivation following Hedonic peer production principles).
I am mentioning, as at the moment the movement is slow-moving, since I am looking for income to sustain my work in the commons. In other words I must let the SX Sustainability principle prevail now :)
Here a link to the core principles of Social experience design:
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#core-principles
RE: https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116154415408228188
I think we also have to be careful and gauge the extent to which we get informed on problems by the way we shaped our own bubble / echo chamber over time.
Today for instance I sent a poll and got astoundingly and delightful positive responses on how people experience #fediverse..
I intend to follow up with another poll. But the poll results already show a new paradigm of social networking that #fediverse which Social experience design calls #PersonalSocialNetworking. On the fedi you are in control over your own #SocialExperience by carefully curating your social graph.
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#personal-social-networking
Here's that poll btw, which will run for 6 more days. Curious about the final results.
With quote posts we are able to shape our own micro #wiki's within our timelines and those of others, buld social graphs (technosphere) and navigate social fabric (socioshere) ..
What might we be be able to weave if the #ActivityPub #LinkedData aspects were used to their full extent and benefit?
Social semantic fabrics.
Glimmers of hope in dark times, #fediverse!
Look at the #delightful responses to this #poll asking how people experience our emerging fedi..
https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116154415408228188
A #SocialMedia landscape of small villages, scattered with occasional larger cities, is the general perception thus far and that is a wonderful difference when contrasting to corporate ad-driven influencer-dominated platforms we have today.
It would be nice if some of the people who voted Ghost Town gave their impression and needs they have wrt the fediverse.. cc @mikeymikey
Also ghost-towners, check out @FediThing reply to the poll's thread:
https://social.chinwag.org/@FediThing/116159075105561569
And @nicol reply at:
https://social.coop/@nicol/116159026520231736
If you didn't vote yet, do so now. And consider adding your boost. It is literally about uplifting our online social universe. 🌻
The current fediverse is an evolutionary dead-end for 2 reasons:
1. It has painted itself in a small niche of decentralizing typical social media use cases, by means of post-facto interop and the introduction of protocol decay.
2. Lacking a proper grassroots standardization process, and with the primary mechanism for fediverse extension being only post-facto interoperability, there is no way out.
Congratulations to the early adopters, who managed to "cross the chasm" with their own app platforms. It took true grit to become deep #ActivityPub experts, and plug holes needed for your app, but you have made it. Post-facto interop works in your favor now. You are unrestrained to productively add more features in your app, and put them on the fedi wire for others to deal with.
To avoid fedi to become less and less attractive to newcomers, we must now consider:
“Why do we want to grow the open social web, and for whom?” -- @ben
And see also the extensive posts I made the past 2 weeks on the subject matter, reiterating the many subjects and challenges of healthy ecosystem formation that ail the #ActivityPub community and #fediverse at large for many years now. I pinned one of those relevant threads to my profile at:
Even more than Gleam community the AS/AP based fediverse faces existential threats where it comes to the promise to lead us towards "the future of social networking", a peopleverse. And #AI poses high danger risks that must be known, so we can anticipate and mitigate them timely.
But above all we have to find ways to constructively collaborate with each in this chaotic grassroots environment we are part of.
#Collaboration and #cocreation at scale, organic growth and sustainable evolution are applied research areas of Social coding commons, where participants add value while working on their own solutions, following their self-interests in alignment with those of other people
To folks who are interested in the general subject matter I addressed above, I recommend watching the talk given by Michiel Leenaars of @nlnet at #FOSDEM last month:
"FOSS in times of war, scarcity and (adversarial) AI" by @michiel
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/FE7ULY-foss-in-times-of-war-scarcity-and-ai/
The current fediverse is an evolutionary dead-end for 2 reasons:
1. It has painted itself in a small niche of decentralizing typical social media use cases, by means of post-facto interop and the introduction of protocol decay.
2. Lacking a proper grassroots standardization process, and with the primary mechanism for fediverse extension being only post-facto interoperability, there is no way out.
Congratulations to the early adopters, who managed to "cross the chasm" with their own app platforms. It took true grit to become deep #ActivityPub experts, and plug holes needed for your app, but you have made it. Post-facto interop works in your favor now. You are unrestrained to productively add more features in your app, and put them on the fedi wire for others to deal with.
To avoid fedi to become less and less attractive to newcomers, we must now consider:
“Why do we want to grow the open social web, and for whom?” -- @ben
Note btw, that for the most part algorithms are not causing the issue of bad integrations between apps. These are due to the pragmatic nature in which our current app-centric fediverse evolves, i.e. by means of post-facto interoperability. Here app developers focus on getting app features on the wire, and whomever first succeeds in making their new custom protocol extension to become popular, becomes the de-facto standard for that feature. And everyone else should "follow the leader" or push themselves out of mainstream fediverse adoption, into their own app niche.
This is not a sustainable path, and I am among years-long advocates that we should do better in how we collectively evolve the fedi, so that it can truly become the social networking of the future. See also my posts from last week, like:
RE: https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116154415408228188
I think we also have to be careful and gauge the extent to which we get informed on problems by the way we shaped our own bubble / echo chamber over time.
Today for instance I sent a poll and got astoundingly and delightful positive responses on how people experience #fediverse..
I intend to follow up with another poll. But the poll results already show a new paradigm of social networking that #fediverse which Social experience design calls #PersonalSocialNetworking. On the fedi you are in control over your own #SocialExperience by carefully curating your social graph.
https://coding.social/blog/reimagine-social/#personal-social-networking
Here's that poll btw, which will run for 6 more days. Curious about the final results.
Available apps may not serve your purposes, but check out the #GeoSocialNetworking category in the delightful #fediverse curated list, where I collected all non-developer #ActivityPub related #FOSS projects..
https://delightful.coding.social/delightful-fediverse-experience/#geosocial-networking
Loops just shipped support for more interactionPolicy types, giving our community more control to limit certain interactions, like disabling comments or QuotePosts.
Huge shout out to GotoSocial and @dumpsterqueer for stewarding this ActivityPub extension to better protect our communities.
Isn't it amazing what is possible when projects that would normally compete with each other, can instead collaborate and build safer communities for all?
We all win when we put people first.
Loops just shipped support for more interactionPolicy types, giving our community more control to limit certain interactions, like disabling comments or QuotePosts.
Huge shout out to GotoSocial and @dumpsterqueer for stewarding this ActivityPub extension to better protect our communities.
Isn't it amazing what is possible when projects that would normally compete with each other, can instead collaborate and build safer communities for all?
We all win when we put people first.
Loops Starter Kits are almost ready to ship!
Consent is crucial to prevent abuse, so you will need to get approval for every account you want to include in each kit.
We will add a setting to auto approve every request, as well as the ability to disable this for your account to auto reject if desired.
Shipping soon!
SX defines the concept of a Grassroots open standard, and a domain of Grassroots standardization.
These are direly needed to be able to healthily evolve #ActivityPub to where it can be the future of social networking, and support a peopleverse.
@fox @silverpill @raphael @julian @mariusor
Yes. I tooted about the need for Grassroots open standards and Grassroots standardization this morning..
https://social.coop/@smallcircles/116147786851664068
In a decentralized grassroots movement, somewhere there needs to an aggregation of the solution artifact. In this case a robust, comprehensible #ActivityPub standard that can be readily implemented in libraries, frameworks and SDK's upon which then subsequently #SocialNetworking solution design can take place.
This is not centralization, this artifact can be federated. But there must be a place of convergence where consensus on protocol design comes together.
There might be a crowdsourced ActivityPub 2.0 specs + documentation site, plus a process around it to make it work.
Noting a small likely unintentional side effect of the ability to edit #Microblog posts on the fediverse..
It enables would-be influencers to use that as a growth-hacking tactic in their arsenal. Whereby editing a post some time after it was published, will serve to remind all people who interacted with it before (by receiving the 'edited' notification). And for those who only favorited another stimulus and opportunity to boost the post as well.
#SX #SocialCoding #ActivityPub #Microblogging #fediverse #SocialWeb
@laprice yes. Though it is not always clear what was the reason for the edit.
(Update: Now I edited because I too hurriedly reacted just to the first part of your reply, and repeated your point, which I now removed from the text 😅 )
But there are other (ab)uses I see from time to time. Some people use editing to turn their post into something of a real-time live blog, e.g. where they update who just presented at a conference. That is very annoying, and I would call it an anti-pattern, an undesirable side effect.
A client sotware might add extra friction to discourage the anti-pattern, e.g. by requiring the formulation of a reason for the edit with a minimum amount of chars.
Also this reason might be #ActivityPub federated. After all a 'federated edit' is something very different than an edit in your personal notepad in a local file. There are more abusive patterns that relate to editing. Thus enforce provisioning a good reason for edits.
(Update: Now I edited to add an important extra point to the post. And this is indiscernable from a growth hacker tactic. Plus if one isn't a growth hacker, and ones toot becomes popular - "goes viral", I hate that term - it is attractive and tempting to keep it all together in that post.)
This will make editing generally be less accessible, more unfriendly UX-wise, but there's something to say for having "Minimize post edits" be a best-practice on the social web.
Noting a small likely unintentional side effect of the ability to edit #Microblog posts on the fediverse..
It enables would-be influencers to use that as a growth-hacking tactic in their arsenal. Whereby editing a post some time after it was published, will serve to remind all people who interacted with it before (by receiving the 'edited' notification). And for those who only favorited another stimulus and opportunity to boost the post as well.
#SX #SocialCoding #ActivityPub #Microblogging #fediverse #SocialWeb
