I am an entrepreneur, small business owner, author, and researcher. I am also working on an open source project called Neuhub.
I am posting from Hubzilla with Neuhub via ActivityPub.
For those on traditional social media, I just say “What if Facebook and Twitter and YouTube could all talk to each other? People on Facebook could follow people on Twitter and people on Twitter can follow people on Facebook.” Then they usually reply “that would be neat” and then I tell them “yeah, that’s what we are building over here in the fediverse.”
It usually is easier to give them an analogy related to something they are familiar with.
To create something like this, you would need to federate two components, and optionally a third.
You would also need to create a standard (a protocol) for the app store to talk to the websites hosting the applications.
Application Hosting: Basically, everyone can create their own website with their own apps. That part would be unmoderated, similar to how you can go to a software publisher’s website today and download a Windows program. They publish their application and data about their apps in a machine readable way where an app store could take that data and create a listing.
The App Store: There would be open source app store code that allows people to run their own app store. The people operating an app store decide what gets listed in the app store. Some app stores will be for a particular niche while some will attempt to list everything. For example, you might have app stores that only have open source software. This would still make the app store operator the gatekeeper, but what is different here is that anyone could use the same software and set up their own app store.
Curation Groups: This allows people or groups to create their own curated list of approved apps. This provides the app stores a shortcut so they don’t have to review every single app themselves. This would allow individuals, communities, associations, and even businesses to create moderated lists of apps they reviewed and believe should be listed in app stores. Mastodon could publish a curated list of Mastodon Apps they recommend. Open source organizations could create a curated list of apps they recommend. The app stores could consume such lists.
People can then choose the app store and the apps they trust. App stores can choose the curated lists they trust.
This is similar to how podcasting platforms work, where a podcaster publishes their audio files and an RSS feed with information about their Podcast, and various Podcast Directories list their podcast. Or similar to how platforms like Steam work, where they list games, many of which can be obtained on the game author’s website as well. The key point being that the authors of the apps can get listed in multiple app stores.
Optionally, both the Application Hosting software and App Store can be integrated with protocols like ActivityPub, AT Protocol, or Nomad/Zot protocol for the purpose of sending out notifications to followers who may be interested in updates and news about the apps or the app store. At the very least, it should list an existing fediverse handle where people can follow them.
So, yes, it can be federated.
To be safe and secure, you would want multiple organizations with resources to run competing app stores using this software and protocol. These organizations can be non-profits, cooperatives, or even small businesses. The reason why is because an organization is more likely to have the resources to moderate the list of apps in their App Store, whereas an individual most likely would not, unless that was their full time job.
Whereas anyone who created an app could run their own website with information about their app, and then request to be listed in various app stores and curated lists.
I think this a great idea!
Why is it so expensive to federate Bluesky?
Mostly because it depends on certain centralized services. You can create your own apps and even host your own content, but the discovery and distribution system has a copy of every post so that it is easy to access by everyone. The positive side is that you don’t have to worry about missing replies in the conversation since their centralized database has a copy of it. The downside is that hosting such a massive database is expensive.
@pelespirit Because Lemmy is federated, your upvotes and downvotes are also sent to different platforms, which may display them.
And you also have to consider how other platforms treat upvotes and downvotes.
On many platforms, your upvotes and downvotes are not only visible, but sometimes result in a notification alert (i.e. someone commented on your post, someone liked your post, someone downvoted your post, etc.). It is not anonymous at all.
They still have control over their data. If implemented properly, it just changes where there post is created since the post is synced back to their own server to their own account. Regardless of where it was created, it would still be visible on that server since it is a reply to that post.
Federated logins make sense for forums and websites where you have access to content such as PeerTube.
For forums, logging into the forum with your fediverse account would actually be ideal since you can use a forum-style interface to navigate the topics, which would be easier than trying to navigate the same topics on Mastodon. Same thing with PeerTube. You may want to watch videos on PeerTube and comment right on their website without creating a PeerTube account. With federated single sign on, you can post with your existing fediverse account.
We have that on Hubzilla and it is called OpenWebAuth. We can log into other instances and comment directly on their instance as ourselves after logging in.
People are unlikely to switch based solely on “it’s decentralized.” Most people don’t care.
But if a platform has features people want, they may consider signing up. But the real draw is having an awesome community and awesome content.
Rules of the internet:
Right now the user’s identity and the content they consume & interact with are too intertwined in many cases.
There are two aspects here:
We have to get out of the mindset that the server you sign up on is your community, because with federation, you are not limited to the server you sign up on.
I didn’t realize that Neil changed his name. ;)
I guess I missed the drama. But it is to be expected. Many people came from centralized social media, and simply signed up for something their friends told them about. For those people, they learned about federation after the fact. It is a new concept for a lot of people.
I think Hubzilla and Friendica are its only links to the rest of the Fediverse. Both support ActivityPub and Diaspora.
Maybe Diaspora needs to update their logo, similar to how Walmart just updated their logo recently.
@NigelFrobisher There actually are a bunch of competing fediverse platforms that use entirely different codebases. Some are actually older than Mastodon.
For example, I am posting from Hubzilla, not Mastodon. Hubzilla has an entirely different codebase and an entirely different feature set.
#[1](https://hubzilla.network/page/info/compare)
It’s not just that they may not care. They may not know what they’re being asked or know what the consequences are for choosing either option. Then they sit there for 30 minutes searching the internet for what the question means.
True. But when talking to someone who lives on traditional social media, it is an explanation they would understand. Sometimes you have to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be.