@finner @darkling @jwz it's how the spec was designed lol

there is a Client api to POST activities to an outbox, and your Server delivers those activities to other inboxes

it's not a change in protocol as much as it is a change in philosophy. everyone chose to build monoliths instead

@trwnh @darkling @jwz

Ah. I was not aware of that. Interesting to know.

@trwnh @jwz yeah that's true, that would be interesting to see!

@trwnh

I feel like I've had a reasonably decent grasp of the way things currently work in practice. I'm trying to make sure I'm wrapping my head around how it would work based on this new information you've given me.

Would you liken this to like a single sign-on system? When someone follows you, they follow your sign-on handle and they would receive anything you posted from any service while logged in with that handle? Wouldn't that need a centralized sign-on service of some sort?

@finner yeah, that's pretty much it

you have an actor on social.example and you use clients like mastodon.example or pixelfed.example as you feel like it

people follow your actor on social.example and your actor on social.example can send out arbitrary activities to those followers. these activities are generated by the clients (mastodon.example, pixelfed.example, etc) and handed off to your outbox on social.example

this is like using thunderbird or outlook which don't do raw SMTP themselves.

@trwnh@mastodon.social

I was just talking about this here. I think I even mentioned you.

Shouldn't all ActivityPub servers implement all objects and leave it to the client? - Fediverse - Fedia

Wouldn't that be better? Let me see if I can explain what I mean. Here on the fediverse each server is kind of restricted to what the user can post....

(fedia.io)

Is there any future where we could see this being the future of #activitypub?

@TheFederatedPipe it could happen in maybe 10 years, idk — it requires philosophical and cultural changes on parts of fedi devs, to stop building monoliths that clone popular centralized apps, and start building for the Web instead. things like facebook and twitter are not built with an open decentralized web in mind. they are built for keeping you in-app. copying their design means copying their assumptions.

@TheFederatedPipe the other thing that keeps most devs from adopting C2S currently is a lack of existing infrastructure, and some unfilled gaps in the user experience that require extensions to fill in. we also need wider standardization of things like authorization and authentication, especially cross-domain. having a reference server would probably help a lot, but it’s a chicken-and-egg situation a bit…

You know? As much as I love the fediverse, things like this kind of disappoint me? I'm not sure if that is the correct way of saying it. Like not everything is actually how it was promised. But I guess is better than the other option, hopefully we get a lot of this things sort out.

@TheFederatedPipe yeah, it’s the idea that things could be better but they arent

twitter imo set back online social communication by at least 15 years