In previous years, I published two "fediverse tech roadmap" posts:
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@julian you've been doing great work.
I don't think @liaizon meant the original post to be a bummer for the Fediverse, but a wake-up call for engaging developers.
I agree that client-first development in ATProto is extremely exciting. We need to do better on the Fediverse side. Fortunately, our social API is great; we just need to start implementing it and using it.
@evan @julian
I was just ranting about what I see going on. There are some really promising user facing integrations between separate projects happening on the other side and it pains me to see it cause I know we can also have that here but there are some serious things lacking here and I desperately want to see more movement in exciting directions. The work @silverpill has been doing around portability & DID stuff I have been pointing out to people repeatedly cause its so important. -
@julian Maybe we should try to implement a forum using just the API.
@evan@cosocial.ca headless NodeBB? Hahahah I love it. We're already set up to go headless with minimal work.
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@julian Cool!
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@julian @silverpill Are you guys even on the same Fediverse as I am?
- Dozens of FEPs under development
- 10+ task forces in the CG
- New work like quote posts from Mastodon
- Ghost.org went live in 2025
- E2EE from Emissary and Bonfire this year
- New Working Group to revise ActivityPubThere is a tonne going on. We just had a FOSDEM Social Web Devroom with 20+ presenters. FediMTL.ca is next week. Fediforum is the week after that.
@Evan Prodromou- Dozens of FEPs under development
...and they're usually only implemented by those who maintain them. These and their works, in turn, mostly stay in the shadows while the bigger players in the Fediverse remain blissfully unaware of them.
Pretty much exactly what @silverpill has been doing for a while now.- New work like quote posts from Mastodon
Technology taken over from GoToSocial.
The principle of how these quote-posts are done taken over from Misskey.
And quote-posts themselves were introduced to the Fediverse as early as May, 2010, by what's known as Friendica today.
This is what @silverpill meant with:Features that already exist somewhere in Fediverse presented as new inventions.
Mastodon presented their quotes as if they had just introduced an all-new, totally revolutionary feature to the Fediverse. In fact, however, the Fediverse had had quote-posts for a decade and a half at that point.
Let's all face it: The main hindrance in Fediverse development is Mastodon. It's a painfully incomplete implementation of a hopelessly outdated version of the ActivityPub spec. At the same time, its cult-like followers see it as the one and only gold standard and the reference implementation of ActivityPub. They believe that Gargron has invented both ActivityPub and the Fediverse because, frankly, that's what the Mastodon folks want everyone to believe.
If the Fediverse had some fair competition, then Mastodon would have to catch up with software like Misskey or Akkoma or Mitra and eventually powerhouses like (streams) or Forte. But what Mastodon lacks in features, it makes up for with sheer market power. The loudest voices that promote the Fediverse don't actually promote the Fediverse; they only promote Mastodon.
The features of the non-Mastodon Fediverse are unknown and outright unimaginable both on Mastodon and outside the Fediverse. And just about everyone believes that Mastodon is as perfect and fully-featured Fediverse software as it ever comes. Pretty much the only ones who don't are those who daily-drive non-Mastodon Fediverse software.
This actually goes as far as Mastodon users trying their hardest to force e.g. Friendica users to throw away their own culture, switch to Mastodon's culture and abstain from using some 80% of Friendica's features because they aren't covered by Mastodon's culture. At the same time, Mastodon users staunchly refuse to adopt any part of any non-Mastodon Fediverse culture. This means that even if non-Mastodon Fediverse devs introduce new features, they'd better not let Mastodon users know.
And so Mastodon can get away both with a laughable set of features, with completely ignoring not only FEPs, but also large parts of the ActivityPub spec, with advertising features which just about the whole rest of the Fediverse has had for years as completely new original inventions of their own, and with implementing non-standard stuff and forcing the rest of the Fediverse to implement "proprietary", non-standard Mastodon developments.
CC: @julian
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity -
Often fanfare is the only thing that is being shipped
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@julian @silverpill Are you guys even on the same Fediverse as I am?
- Dozens of FEPs under development
- 10+ task forces in the CG
- New work like quote posts from Mastodon
- Ghost.org went live in 2025
- E2EE from Emissary and Bonfire this year
- New Working Group to revise ActivityPubThere is a tonne going on. We just had a FOSDEM Social Web Devroom with 20+ presenters. FediMTL.ca is next week. Fediforum is the week after that.
Yeah that's pretty much what I meant.
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@Evan Prodromou
- Dozens of FEPs under development
...and they're usually only implemented by those who maintain them. These and their works, in turn, mostly stay in the shadows while the bigger players in the Fediverse remain blissfully unaware of them.
Pretty much exactly what @silverpill has been doing for a while now.- New work like quote posts from Mastodon
Technology taken over from GoToSocial.
The principle of how these quote-posts are done taken over from Misskey.
And quote-posts themselves were introduced to the Fediverse as early as May, 2010, by what's known as Friendica today.
This is what @silverpill meant with:Features that already exist somewhere in Fediverse presented as new inventions.
Mastodon presented their quotes as if they had just introduced an all-new, totally revolutionary feature to the Fediverse. In fact, however, the Fediverse had had quote-posts for a decade and a half at that point.
Let's all face it: The main hindrance in Fediverse development is Mastodon. It's a painfully incomplete implementation of a hopelessly outdated version of the ActivityPub spec. At the same time, its cult-like followers see it as the one and only gold standard and the reference implementation of ActivityPub. They believe that Gargron has invented both ActivityPub and the Fediverse because, frankly, that's what the Mastodon folks want everyone to believe.
If the Fediverse had some fair competition, then Mastodon would have to catch up with software like Misskey or Akkoma or Mitra and eventually powerhouses like (streams) or Forte. But what Mastodon lacks in features, it makes up for with sheer market power. The loudest voices that promote the Fediverse don't actually promote the Fediverse; they only promote Mastodon.
The features of the non-Mastodon Fediverse are unknown and outright unimaginable both on Mastodon and outside the Fediverse. And just about everyone believes that Mastodon is as perfect and fully-featured Fediverse software as it ever comes. Pretty much the only ones who don't are those who daily-drive non-Mastodon Fediverse software.
This actually goes as far as Mastodon users trying their hardest to force e.g. Friendica users to throw away their own culture, switch to Mastodon's culture and abstain from using some 80% of Friendica's features because they aren't covered by Mastodon's culture. At the same time, Mastodon users staunchly refuse to adopt any part of any non-Mastodon Fediverse culture. This means that even if non-Mastodon Fediverse devs introduce new features, they'd better not let Mastodon users know.
And so Mastodon can get away both with a laughable set of features, with completely ignoring not only FEPs, but also large parts of the ActivityPub spec, with advertising features which just about the whole rest of the Fediverse has had for years as completely new original inventions of their own, and with implementing non-standard stuff and forcing the rest of the Fediverse to implement "proprietary", non-standard Mastodon developments.
CC: @julian
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity@jupiter_rowland You're right on point, and Mastodon quotes is an excellent example
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In previous years, I published two "fediverse tech roadmap" posts:
- Fediverse tech roadmap 2024
- Fediverse tech roadmap 2025However, I didn't publish such post this year because not much has happened in 2025. Many problems I talked about require complex solutions, but unfortunately proposed solutions are often very limited or lead to centralization. Or worse, there is no solution but only an imitation of work. I don't want to write about that.
I saw a thread today where ATProto ecosystem was compared to #ActivityPub. Things are happening in the Atmosphere, but not in Fediverse. MAU graphs are flat. What's going on?
There are multiple factors at play, but I think fake activity may be the biggest contributor. Trivial developments presented as breakthroughs. Features that already exist somewhere in Fediverse presented as new inventions. Vaporware. Specs written by people who have no idea how to implement them. Working groups that do nothing but meetings.
Real work is ignored, competent developers see that and quit.
We need to fix this.
For my part, I will continue to document #Fediverse development at @weekinfediverse. But this newsletter doesn't have much impact.
If I was to join fedi development, I'd start with teaching devs and FEP authors that a dictionary isn't a valid representation of HTTP headers
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If I was to join fedi development, I'd start with teaching devs and FEP authors that a dictionary isn't a valid representation of HTTP headers
@mattesilver Why not?
I know that a header may appear more than once, but this is not incompatible with dictionary (the data type).
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In previous years, I published two "fediverse tech roadmap" posts:
- Fediverse tech roadmap 2024
- Fediverse tech roadmap 2025However, I didn't publish such post this year because not much has happened in 2025. Many problems I talked about require complex solutions, but unfortunately proposed solutions are often very limited or lead to centralization. Or worse, there is no solution but only an imitation of work. I don't want to write about that.
I saw a thread today where ATProto ecosystem was compared to #ActivityPub. Things are happening in the Atmosphere, but not in Fediverse. MAU graphs are flat. What's going on?
There are multiple factors at play, but I think fake activity may be the biggest contributor. Trivial developments presented as breakthroughs. Features that already exist somewhere in Fediverse presented as new inventions. Vaporware. Specs written by people who have no idea how to implement them. Working groups that do nothing but meetings.
Real work is ignored, competent developers see that and quit.
We need to fix this.
For my part, I will continue to document #Fediverse development at @weekinfediverse. But this newsletter doesn't have much impact.
@silverpill @weekinfediverse i cannot see answers to this post from my instance and if i try to open the link from the comment i want to answer to (https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/ef9b22ce-fae5-4602-9e51-5825535d39ea) i get a 500 error on browser and just no feedback from instance
as i already said under the atproto post, it's easy to spin up clients and services when hosting of the data is unlimited and by VC money and your job just becomes ''invent a cool service which you can monetize at almost no cost because identity and personal data are already offered for free"
Mastodon moves slowly for new big features but everytime I try another software I notice the lack of simple stuff that can be allowlists, keyword filter with display, lists management (that sucks on mastodon, but sucks even more on other software) etc etc.
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