This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
There was an article in Foreign Policy a couple days ago talking about how China's WeChat is the only real Everything App, but it was a product of a very specific time and place.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/31/elon-musk-wechat-twitter-x-united-states-everything-apps/
The conclusion is that there's not likely to be another Everything App. I'm still thinking that over, but it sounds plausible.
I doubt it. I admin a lemmy instance and a regular fediverse instance, and I use them both very differently, because their interfaces lend themselves to different uses. Even though they can communicate with each other, trying to navigate a large number of lemmy groups from Hajkey would be annoying, and trying to follow specific users from lemmy would be annoying.
An all in one app would mash that all together, which would probably be overwhelming and confusing
and a regular fediverse instance
what exactly is this other service you're running?
Hajkey, which is a fork of Calckey/Firefish. If you're unfamiliar with them, broadly speaking, it's a mastodon alternative with a fancy UI
But the cool thing about open standards is that there's a clear pathway to creating an everything app. Especially if decentralized ids gain some traction, then we could have an app that combines mastodon and pixelfed but presents the different posts in a sensible way.
I can't really wrap my head around what such an app could look like, but it's much more feasible to build one than it would be with closed services. I'm hopeful that freedom to experiment without lockin will lead to some really neat ideas
This was a goal of ActivityPub but it'll take a lot of work to get there. I'd love to see the fediverse evolve in the way you're talking about but I don't think it will while mastodon remains the dominant platform. The masto team did a partial EEE (they did the embrace/extend part) years before Thread was around and they've dominated the fediverse ever since and most people refer to this place as mastodon. The masto dev team has said multiple times they're not interested in adding support for other content and they want to remain a microblogging service.
Other service have to remain compatible with mastodon to gain any traction which makes getting a new project off the ground more difficult. Lemmy was around for a couple years before the reddit migration and you'll notice kbin is just about as big as lemmy despite the head start. Outside of some new huge event, the fediverse will probably continue on as it is for a while. I'm really hoping lemmy/kbin can gain a large enough userbase to throw some weight around and influence other projects development so we can see some evolution.
Excuse my ignorance here. To what extent can this problem be simplified with DIDs or Decentralized IDs, rather than "federated accounts".
Take the example of Filpboard. I signed up to integrate #mastodon with #bluesky. Supposedly, they have AI to process two disparate systems. The result: Nada. Why? Because I have to put some verification HTML in a website.
I have a "domain name handle" that should allow two independent information sources to communicate. The same account, or DID, needs to work on both systems. I don't see that.
I don't think we're heading towards an everything app, but we may well see an everything account at some point. Companies already use social media management portals to post/respond on multiple platforms; I think if that kind of commercial demand arises for fediverse services, we will probably see similar fediverse management portals which allow you to interact with content on multiple ActivityPub services in a context-sensitive way via one account.
It's entirely possible that a fediverse platform emerges that's capable of performing many different kinds of activities. But, the far more likely outcome is that platforms eventually implement the Client-to-Server half of the ActivityPub protocol, which currently very few platforms implement.
The idea is that virtually every Fediverse platform could, in theory, act as clients for one another, enabling a "one account posts everything" possibility with different frontends accessing different subsets of data.
No, you're not quite understanding what ActivityPub is. The data under all the fediverse services is not the same infrastructure at all. The communication between those various services just uses the same language (ActivityPub). Those various services can interpret and store (or ignore) ActivityPub messages any way they want. Service instances add another layer to the whole thing as well.
In order for an "everything app" to be successful (if you buy the argument that it feasibly can be), it would have to be a centralized service. Decentralization, by its very nature, encourages the opposite of that -- want to make some niche service because existing services don't satisfy some fringe need you have, but still want to interact with others on other platforms? You can do that with the fediverse. But that also means your new service isn't part of an "everything app"... it just can potentially talk to one that might exist.