Quoted posts
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@silverpill @julian given this framing, it is incredibly limiting to say "the network consists solely of URIs hosting JSON documents which contain an inbox and an RSA publicKey which is used to generate a Cavage draft 8 Signature on an AS2 Activity payload of a certain shape which is then delivered to another inbox via HTTP POST with a certain Content-Type, after which the activity will be unwrapped and discarded... no exceptions to any of this" (etc)
because maybe there's better ways.
can the network not consist of all manner of agents whose identities can be established by all manner of methods? in the same way TLS negotiates an encryption suite, a generic "TLI" can be used to negotiate an identity proof without relying on TLS client certificates.
can the application layer not similarly negotiate a semantic profile for which data models, serializations, etc are supported, and what will be done with thr payload?
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can the network not consist of all manner of agents whose identities can be established by all manner of methods? in the same way TLS negotiates an encryption suite, a generic "TLI" can be used to negotiate an identity proof without relying on TLS client certificates.
can the application layer not similarly negotiate a semantic profile for which data models, serializations, etc are supported, and what will be done with thr payload?
@silverpill @julian because at the end of the day, it all boils down to agents passing around resources. or if you take an RDF view, resources communicating with other resources.
the question is in how we allow that to happen. on which terms. within which semantic framework.
the protocol is once again irrelevant, beyond its function of passing the message from A to B. it's what B does with A's message that matters. it's the set of every possible message A could send... regardless of transport.
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that's a bit simplistic imo. software doesn't matter, sure; what matters is what the software lets you *do*. but "interoperability" is not a goal in itself. it's a means to an end. for different software that let you do fundamentally different things in fundamentally different worldviews, there can be no meaningful interoperability.
example: fedi has concepts and abstractions for "posts" and "profiles". what happens when you don't have these same building blocks?
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@silverpill @trwnh @julian@community.nodebb.org Remember that one AI-based social network that said that they would never have follow relationships? Trying to imagine how to make that work with federation was a bit of a brain teaser. Their attempt at Mastodon interoperability fell apart for much simpler and much worse reasons though, so that experiment quickly turned into a nonstarter.
Maven Imported 1.12 Million Fediverse Posts (Updated) - We Distribute
A social network founded by a former OpenAI employee was caught importing public posts from Mastodon...and ran AI analysis to add tags to them.
We Distribute (wedistribute.org)
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@silverpill @trwnh @julian@community.nodebb.org Remember that one AI-based social network that said that they would never have follow relationships? Trying to imagine how to make that work with federation was a bit of a brain teaser. Their attempt at Mastodon interoperability fell apart for much simpler and much worse reasons though, so that experiment quickly turned into a nonstarter.
Maven Imported 1.12 Million Fediverse Posts (Updated) - We Distribute
A social network founded by a former OpenAI employee was caught importing public posts from Mastodon...and ran AI analysis to add tags to them.
We Distribute (wedistribute.org)
@julian@fietkau.social @silverpill @julian@community.nodebb.org i think the real question is what kind of world are we building here -- one limited to being a "social network"? that's so constrained. i don't want to live in that world. i don't want to "post" to "followers". i want to publish on my website and maybe syndicate to other websites of my explicit choosing. i want to be able to participate in discussions on various forums without having to make a new set of credentials for each one. neither of these require federation...
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@julian@fietkau.social @silverpill @julian@community.nodebb.org i think the real question is what kind of world are we building here -- one limited to being a "social network"? that's so constrained. i don't want to live in that world. i don't want to "post" to "followers". i want to publish on my website and maybe syndicate to other websites of my explicit choosing. i want to be able to participate in discussions on various forums without having to make a new set of credentials for each one. neither of these require federation...
@trwnh @silverpill @julian@community.nodebb.org I guess we don't have to do pubsub if we don't want to.
But addressing conversations to a closed circle of people instead of having everything public is something that, broadly generalizing, people want, so we probably want some form of identity management and authentication and recipient addressing. My gut feeling is at that point we're in "social network" territory. But I've never been someone to dwell much on semantics and I don't feel strongly about it here. -
@trwnh @silverpill @julian@community.nodebb.org I guess we don't have to do pubsub if we don't want to.
But addressing conversations to a closed circle of people instead of having everything public is something that, broadly generalizing, people want, so we probably want some form of identity management and authentication and recipient addressing. My gut feeling is at that point we're in "social network" territory. But I've never been someone to dwell much on semantics and I don't feel strongly about it here.@julian@fietkau.social @silverpill @julian@community.nodebb.org that's basically just message passing. a message doesn't have to be a "post".
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@julian@fietkau.social @silverpill @julian@community.nodebb.org that's basically just message passing. a message doesn't have to be a "post".
@julian@fietkau.social @silverpill @julian@community.nodebb.org to clarify: a message can also be a request, or a command, or a statement, or a query. we limit ourselves greatly when we think only in terms of “posts”. even within the limits of a “post”, we still have multiple contexts within which we can consider the message.
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@julian@fietkau.social @silverpill @julian@community.nodebb.org to clarify: a message can also be a request, or a command, or a statement, or a query. we limit ourselves greatly when we think only in terms of “posts”. even within the limits of a “post”, we still have multiple contexts within which we can consider the message.
@infinite love ⴳ We already have different types of messages. Notes, articles, likes, etc. ActivityPub can handle those and more. How it typically works is that platforms ignore types they don't understand, which is expected behavior.
For example, Hubzilla has events and RSVPs. Other platforms don't. So only Hubzilla displays the post as an event. Everyone else displays it as a note.
Or a project management system might manage tasks over ActivityPub, but that doesn't mean other platforms will support it.
Platforms that understand posts and followers will interoperate. Project management systems will interoperate. But you have to get creative to get both of those to work together. -
@infinite love ⴳ We already have different types of messages. Notes, articles, likes, etc. ActivityPub can handle those and more. How it typically works is that platforms ignore types they don't understand, which is expected behavior.
For example, Hubzilla has events and RSVPs. Other platforms don't. So only Hubzilla displays the post as an event. Everyone else displays it as a note.
Or a project management system might manage tasks over ActivityPub, but that doesn't mean other platforms will support it.
Platforms that understand posts and followers will interoperate. Project management systems will interoperate. But you have to get creative to get both of those to work together.@scott those are all posts
this isnt about activitypub
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@scott those are all posts
this isnt about activitypub
@scott i mean “message” in the sense that raw HTTP requests and responses are “messages”.
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@scott i mean “message” in the sense that raw HTTP requests and responses are “messages”.
@infinite love ⴳ That can be anything you want to. -
@scott i mean “message” in the sense that raw HTTP requests and responses are “messages”.
@infinite love ⴳ If it's a post, I'll use ActivityPub or Nomad Protocol. For everything else, I'll just use an API or something like that. -
@infinite love ⴳ If it's a post, I'll use ActivityPub or Nomad Protocol. For everything else, I'll just use an API or something like that.
@scott i want an ecosystem of standardized APIs with semantics beyond just “posts”. does that help?
i want an API to talk to people and machines in equal measure
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@scott i want an ecosystem of standardized APIs with semantics beyond just “posts”. does that help?
i want an API to talk to people and machines in equal measure
@infinite love ⴳ Sounds reasonable to me. I'm not sure how that's related to quoted posts (the topic of this thread), but I support the idea. -
@infinite love ⴳ Sounds reasonable to me. I'm not sure how that's related to quoted posts (the topic of this thread), but I support the idea.
@scott the thread drifted a lot from “showing software icons” to “interoperability is the goal of software” to me disagreeing with that last bit
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@julian Sorry if I was a bit salty earlier and I didn't want to rain on anyone's parade.
There are many benefits to this proposed variation of quote posts where the person being quoted can update or delete their quote.
Let me argue the other side then.
One big benefit of this proposed quote post methodology is that it would be a version that Mastodon, et. al. would probably be willing to support. They have valid concerns that people will abuse quote posts to harass others. This proposal mitigates that.
It also is useful in non-malicious contexts since people can fix typos and errors in their original post. It's also useful if the person being quoted wants to retract what they said, perhaps because they changed their mind on a topic or found new information.
Malicious use can be mitigated in the UI by indicating the quoted person changed their post and providing a history of changes. Some platforms already do this for regular posts.
The quoted person being able to delete their quote raises some unique philosophical questions, like whether a politician can delete something they said from a journalist's quote post. Or where someone intentionally changes their post in a malicious manner, which alters the quote post and makes the person quoting someone else look bad.
So, there are many facets to this proposal. It still may be good to pursue even if some platforms aren't going to implement it. But there are also some scenarios we want to consider.
