2024 (@2024@aphowell.com)
Social media
Like a lot of people, I recently spent some time cleaning up my social media accounts. I plan to keep this page updated in the future, along with the social icons on the website, but I figured a post is also warranted.
tl;dr: I use Bluesky the way I used to use Twitter (e.g. more likely to react to memes or news items, or attempt self-promotion). I use Mastodon for slightly more personal posts (e.g. dog pictures, random thing-I’m-doing-right-now type posts). The aphowell.com website is my hub on the Internet: I control it, use it to verify my identity, and push content outward via bridging and syndication.
Currently in use
Bluesky (@aphowell.com): This is a verified account. Use of this handle confirms that the Bluesky account owner (me!) was able to make DNS updates to aphowell.com.
Mastodon (@aphowell@wandering.shop): This is a verified account. The little green checkmark (next to the listing for aphowell.com in my profile) means that the account owner (me!) was able to make HTML updates to aphowell.com.
SendFox (@aphowell): This is a newsletter, not really social media, but it is a service that I’m actively using to stay in touch with folks.
Bridging and syndication
Bluesky (@aphowell.com.web.brid.gy): This account publishes my aphowell.com blog posts to Bluesky. (I used Bridgy Fed to set it up.) In theory, it should allow for interaction across platforms/protocols.
Mastodon (@aphowell.com@aphowell.com): This account publishes my aphowell.com blog posts. (Federation is a backend feature of WordPress.) This allows you to read or interact with posts from a federated account.
RSS: My blog posts are syndicated using ye olde fashioned RSS, if you have a favored reader.
I was thinking of bridging my Bluesky and Mastodon socials, so either account could be followed on either protocol.1 But since I’m active (albeit in slightly different ways) on each platform already, I don’t feel the need to broadcast purely social posts.
Technically extant
I have accounts on Amazon (@aphowell), Dreamwidth (@aphowell), Goodreads (@aphowell), LibraryThing (@aphowell), Linktree (@aphowell), and Ravelry (@APHowell). Of those, I keep Amazon and Linktree up-to-date, but none of these places is a particularly good place to find me and I never really used them for the social part of social media.
Nope
Facebook: I started using this pseudonym after Facebook started asking for identification, which is just as well. Any A. P. Howell you might see is most emphatically not me.
Threads: I want no part of this. If there is an A. P. Howell Threads account, it’s definitely not me.
Tumblr: I deleted my account a while back. There was no original content there and I didn’t bother with any sort of profile redirect.
Squatter’s rights
Bluesky (@aphowell.bsky.social): This was my original handle. During a recent major influx of new users, I decided an extra layer of verification was a good idea. I am squatting on this handle to use as a redirect and prevent confusion.
Mastodon (@aphowell@mastodon.social): This was my first Mastodon account. I created it a few years ago, then quickly noped out because at that point the learning curve for finding folks was not worth my time. Since I never used it, I just updated it to point people toward my active account.
Instagram (@a.p.howell): I had maybe a dozen posts, few enough that it did not take long to delete them manually. The profile is just there to direct folks to other accounts; I don’t plan on posting anything in the future.
Twitter/X (@APHowell): I deleted my account and set this profile up as a redirect. I do not plan on tweeting in the future.
- Quick and non-technical rundown (because I’m not well-versed on the nitty-gritty): Bluesky uses something called AT Protocol. The Fediverse (Mastodon, Threads, WordPress, Ghost, Drupal, Frendica, etc.) uses ActivityPub. A “bridge”—like the third party, open source Bridgy Fed project—allows services using different protocols to talk to each other. ↩︎
#activitypub #atProtocol #bluesky #bridging #fediverse #mastodon #Newsletter #socialMedia #website #whereToFindMe #whereYouCannotFindMe
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snac (@snac@comam.es)
I'm glad to announce the release of version 2.65 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in C. It includes the following changes:
Added a new user option to disable automatic follow confirmations (follow requests must be manually approved from the people page).
The search box also searches for accounts (via webfinger).
New command-line action
import_list, to import a Mastodon list in CSV format (so that Mastodon Follow Packs can be directly used).New command-line action
import_block_list, to import a Mastodon list of accounts to be blocked in CSV format.https://comam.es/what-is-snac
If you find #snac useful, please consider contributing via LiberaPay: https://liberapay.com/grunfink/
#snacAnnounces
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mattwiebe (@mattwiebe@mastodon.social)
Support rotation day 2, I'll be following up @pfefferle's Euro timezone office hours with a North America version at 3pm ET / 12pm PT today.
Come bring your questions, bugs, or just to hang out and talk #ActivityPub for #WordPress !
https://mastodon.social/@pfefferle/113548513185791291
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ssanf01 (@ssanf01@mastodon.social)
... i per això mataran el protocol AT. Però no es connectaran a ActivityPub. I passaran a ser una illa al mig del mar, que és Internet, totalment aïllada i sense possibilitat de connectar-se amb les altres illes.
I les altres illes es connectaran entre elles amb el protocol ActivityPub, i parlaran antre elles, i s'intercanviaran informació. Mentre veuen com la papallona blava està sola, aïllada. Sense voler parlar.
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tdmatern (@tdmatern@mastodon.social)
👋🏼 Meine Tröts gibt’s jetzt auch auf #Bluesky 🦋
Aber ich bleibe dem #Fediverse und #ActivityPub dabei treu - denn das alles passiert mit der Bridge von @bsky.brid.gy
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gerrit (@gerrit@eicker.news)
@oliverg @heinz @Mela @ton Hehe... Is the #name really the problem? Or simply the lack of #marketing for the existing name and the overall product? My impression is that no one is seriously taking care of it, which leads to projects like #Bluesky / #ATProto briefly overtaking the much more sophisticated #Mastodon / #Fediverse / #ActivityPub, without any solid argument for it. See also this discussion: https://eicker.news/@gerrit/113508276969732051
Show Original Post
2024 (@2024@blog.reclaim.technology)
What Would MyActivityRouterKit and MyActivityClientKit Be?
So, I find myself in a situation where I want my experience of the fediverse, and my interaction with the fediverse, to break out of the mold that casts most of the current class of fediverse servers. I want to come at it from a different direction and different architectural model to see if the differences in structure and approach make for a more adaptable experience for users and administrators of the instance.
There are lots of different descriptions1 out there on how the fediverse works and what a fediverse instance is responsible for in terms of complying with the ActivityPub protocol2 and various other protocols and conventions that have accreted around the varied instance implementations to varying degrees of interoperability and angst. If you would like to know more about the details on how ActivityPub works in theory and in practice, I beseech thee to follow the example of my fedifriend Christine Lemmer-Webber3 and post a message in the fediverse asking folk to explain it to you. You will get a lot of eager assistance based on previous experiences.
How’s The Fediverse Work Anyway?
For the purposes of this thought experiment, it’s sufficient to say that most fediverse servers provide a way for their users to post new Activities from a client, have those Activities be distributed to a user’s followers, and receive Activities from remote users, both those that are followed by local users and those that are interacting with Activities originating from local users, and since ActivityPub is very web-centric, a web-based reference of the user Activities on their profile for viewing (pending various other conditions). There’s more to it but that’s close enough to talk about what I want to talk about.
What I’d Like To Do Differently
There are dozens of existing fediverse server projects in active use currently, some of them by a handful of folks, some of them by thousands and thousands of servers, and each takes its own approach to participating in the fediverse. A large majority of them seem to focus on reproducing the experience, or parts thereof, of other formerly popular social networks of yore, and are successful to various extents based on their users’ continued use of their servers. But none of them are really approaching the fediverse from the direction I think I want to, for my own personal experience. (Some of the smallest of the projects come much closer to what I think I want than the larger projects, for reasons that will probably become clear as this post goes on.)
This post is my attempt to put down in writing some of the ideas I want to carry forward into the theoretical implementation of an ActivityPub server, MyActivityRouterKit, or MARK, and a web-based ActivityPub client, MyActivityClientKit, or MACK. I feel like these names are horrible and perfect. This is no way to brand a serious project. This is not a serious project and it needs no brand, but names are nice, so MARK and MACK it shall be, at least for the duration of this post.
So, in no particular order, here are the overall focal points I would hypothetically take if I were to undertake implementing my preferred approach to MARK and MACK.
Modular vs Monolithic
Most of the current batch of fediverse servers are highly opinionated (in *my* opinion), batteries-included type projects. They’re generally started by someone with a vision for what they want their experience to be, and they build that experience. They’re big ol’ monoliths that satisfy the requirements necessary to participate in the dance that is ActivityPub server-to-server federation, and they provide some form of API for clients to communicate with them, and they spit out some web views as well. There’s generally (but not always!) a database involved, and a bunch of storage for media attachments, and queue runners to handle the Activities being shuttled back and forth between the participating nodes. There’s generally some sort of administrative interface, on the web and/or in the form of command line tooling. There are maintenance scripts. There are logs to ship and metrics to be tracked. Roadmaps and issue trackers abound. It’s all very much a Software Project.
I’m more interested in a far less monolithic, more modular, approach. Often, an analogy is tossed out into the void: “The fediverse works kinda like email!” and it’s true, to a point. I’d like to lean into that point, frankly, and have a fedi server that works like a bare-bones mail transit agent (MTA), or more simply mail server.
Mail servers are neat. They listen for connections, and when a connection comes in, they speak the protocols, make the checks to see if the incoming traffic is something that meets their *minimum criteria for correctness*, and then hands it off to the rest of the process(es) that will decide the ultimate fate for the recently received data. Mail servers have been around for decades and decades, so being opinionated about how they should work has been going on for a long time, and lots of opinions have been built up and burned down. As such, there are many ways to solve for any particular style of mail processing that a nascent mail server admin might want to invoke. Want to have your mail server check to see if the incoming messages are spam before delivering them to your users? There are lots of great packages that take an incoming messages, apply logic to decide if they’re spam or not, and label them, passing them on to other processes that know what to do with spam and what to do with not-spam.
And there are lots of other types of processing that might take place when a mail server receives a message before the message lands in the mailbox it is intended for, if it ever gets there at all! So, MTAs usually are structured in a way that make it possible to have a processing pipeline that handles incoming messages based on the content of the messages themselves, including the metadata about that content, and so it’s a pretty flexible system. You like your anti-spam solution, I like mine, a good MTA will work with either. Sweet!
So, MyActivityRouterKit, good ol’ MARK, would approach the problem space by focusing on making sure the initial transaction – the receiving and sending of Activities to and from other ActivityPub servers – was technically correct (the best kind), and then handing the technically correct Activities off to one or more modular scripts that would examine, massage, and sort those Activities into their proper places based on the rules set up by the operator of that instance. Some instances will want more processing, some less, but all of them will need some, so concentrate on the some that they all need, and allow for multiple approaches to the some that are “correct for my needs but not for everyone”.
Not a fediverse server so much as a kit for creating a fediverse server that works the way the operator wants it to work. MARK.
Easy To Deploy
This one’s not about the fediverse’s approach to building software, but rather about how a huge swath of the world’s software developers have decided that having huge stacks of developer tooling be involved in the deployment and operation of server software is legit. It is legit, sure, if you’re willing to focus on only addressing the needs of operators comfortable with the combination of tooling you’ve selected for your project. Otherwise, every piece of your tech stack is another barrier to adoption for someone who just wants to run a thing.
So, I want MARK and MACK to be as simple as possible to deploy for your average operator. I want them to be “drop these files on your web server” simple to deploy. Simple simple. So, I’d be likely to reach for a tech stack that’s pretty ubiquitous, is widely supported by hosting providers for non-technical customers, and brings minimal barriers to adoption in tow. Yep, PHP. Good old PHP. Drop files in folder on PHP-capable web server and bingo bango bongo, your thing’s doing the thing. Probably wouldn’t even use Composer to manage any libraries I’d include – I’d just vendor them in and update dependencies when I released a new version. Rolling releases leave people on the side of the information superhighway with a flat tire as much as not. I’d rather give folk a code drop that worked together and would stay put until the next time they installed a code drop.
Easy To Modify
Did I mention PHP? It’s just a scripting language. Text files. Easy to edit. No compilation step. No minifying. No obfuscation. Text. Files.
So, I’d probably vendor in a web-based text editor, maybe even with PHP syntax highlighting, and expose the ability to modify the scripts from the operator’s web interface. Make change, save file, test change, be happy or roll back. Want to commit your modifications to a revision control system of some sort? Good idea! That should be easy to do as well, again from the web interface as much as possible.
Want to handle some Activity type I didn’t handle more than in the most generic sense? Drop in a new handler for that type and roll on, friend.
But another key aspect of making something “easy to modify” means it also needs to be “easy to comprehend”. So, MARK and MACK would be heavily documented throughout its code base, in a narrative comment style that addresses both the technical and the conceptual design and implementation of each part of the processing scripts, in a tone similar to that taken by Terrence Eden’s single-file ActivityPub server in PHP here: https://gitlab.com/edent/activitypub-single-php-file but maybe even more verbosely! I’m a chatty person!
Aggressive Interoperability
So, what kind of batteries do I want in *my* fediverse server? I want battery flexibility. I want to adopt support for things other ActivityPub servers already support, and I want to be able to play with and prototype support for things other ActivityPub servers don’t yet support. I want to adopt Mastodon’s content warnings (to an extent) and GoToSocial’s interaction policy support, and the Misskey-family emojo reaction support, and so on and so forth. I want to support PeerTube videos and Pixelfed images and albums, and Funkwhale playlists, and on and on and on. I want it to be a relatively approachable task to look at how some Activity type is being propagated across the network and implement a handler for accepting and displaying that Activity type in a way that pleases me as a user and me as an operator and me as a community builder, and I don’t want to have to empanel a committee to decide how to approach doing so.
Excessively Sparse
And lastly, I want it to be as small and svelte as possible. Just enough code, just barely, to do the things I want it doing, and no extra baggage. Life’s already complicated, let’s work on making it less so on the optional bits we choose to do, eh? No reason to over-engineer this – scale is a trap.
So, Will It Happen?
Who knows? I clearly have Thoughts and Opinions. I’ve a history of building stuff like this when I’ve the time and drive. It could happen. It might not!
You could do it! I would not be upset. I might not be impressed, either! Don’t do it to impress me, do it because you want your own kit for building your fediverse experience.
If I end up doing something like this, you’ll probably hear about it. Maybe not! Life is weird.
Thanks for reading!
- https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/introduction-to-activitypub/508 ↩︎
- https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ ↩︎
- https://social.coop/@cwebber/113483100191170865 ↩︎
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sharan (@sharan@metalhead.club)
I find Bluesky excitement interesting. What baffles me is how in the hell Mastodon is still considered more complicated than Bluesky.
Are you on Bluesky? How do you find it so far?
#Mastodon #Bluesky #Fediverse #ActivityPub #ATProto #SocialMedia
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kuketzblog (@kuketzblog@social.tchncs.de)
Wir haben das Fediverse-Schaubild erneut aktualisiert! Ein herzliches Dankeschön an @imke für die Überarbeitung und die wertvolle Unterstützung. Hier ist die neueste Version des Fediverse-Schaubilds – schaut es euch an! 👇
Gerne teilen!
#fediverse #schaubild #mastodon #pleroma #misskey #hubzilla #diaspora #lemmy #kbin #friendica #bookworm #funkwhale #peertube #pixelfed #activitypub
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pfefferle (@pfefferle@mastodon.social)
so, done for today! if you missed it, maybe we can chat tomorrow or you will be able to chat with @mattwiebe later today 🙂
#officehours #activitypub #wordpress
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pfefferle (@pfefferle@mastodon.social)
I will be around for some 30 or more mins... https://mastodon.social/@pfefferle/113548513185791291
#officehours #activitypub #wordpress
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pfefferle (@pfefferle@mastodon.social)
support rotation day #2: I will be around for one hour or a bit more, to talk about the #ActivityPub #Plugin for #WordPress and/or to help you with issue.
https://meet.jit.si/wp-activitypub
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