Re: Towards a Unified Open Social Web Spec

I find it very helpful to think of Activity{Pub,Streams} as the “inter” standard protocol between various social networks.

Like the “inter”-net is the way to “inter” between different networking protocols like Ethernet, token-ring, etc.

Cheers,



Johannes.


> On Aug 27, 2024, at 14:45, Evan Prodromou <evan@prodromou.name> wrote:
> 
> We have a standard data model; it's called Activity Streams 2.0.
> 
> It's a W3C standard.
> 
> It's what those bridges use to connect to each other. Probably because it's an open standard.
> 
> Developers who refuse to use the current W3C standard are not going to implement yet another W3C standard just because it's a W3C standard.
> 
> And it's not even worth it to try to get them to. Let's look at the numbers:
> 
> - With Flipboard enabling AP for all 145M users, there are somewhere north of 200M accounts on the Fediverse*
> - There are over 100 implementations of AP tracked on fedidb.
> - There are over 30,000 servers tracked on fedidb.
> 
> The current bridges are sufficient for including BS and Nostr users until they move to accounts on the social Web (hopefully with Lola!).
> 
> Evan
> 
> * It's unclear how many of the 200M Threads users have enabled AP. My best estimate based in samples is 10-20%.
> 
> On Aug 27, 2024 17:01, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> The open social web is making great strides, but we're seeing varied efforts with different trade-offs.
> 
> ActivityPub is federating at scale, reaching millions with solid moderation. Nostr, though smaller with 10k-20k DAUs, offers a rich playground for R&D with advanced features like zaps, encryption, and app portability. IndieWeb is driven by passionate folks focused on interop, specs, and running code. Solid blends social with personal data storage, standards-compliant and hopefully WG-bound soon.
> 
> Yet, we lack a unified data model to bridge these efforts seamlessly. Some promising bridges exist—Alex Gleason’s “Ditto” between Nostr and ActivityPub, and Bridgy unifying across systems, even touching Bluesky. But there's no consistent, extensible, and interoperable spec that allows everything to just work together.
> 
> The promise of standards has often fallen short—things built outside the standard, or standards not quite fitting needs. For instance, adding a second "Nip-05" identifier in Nostr could take ages to agree on, despite being technically simple. Similar issues linger in Solid, even with its theoretically compliant system.
> 
> We’re not reaping the full benefits of standardization, though they’re within reach. Maybe it's time for a few of us to craft a unified W3C social web spec. We need a flexible template where developers can build freely, rapid prototyping in a permissionless environment, with specs that don’t require months of consensus. Backward compatibility, unihibited development, and a an outlet to unlock new waves of creativity, could be the result of a clean unified social spec
> 
> Would love to hear your thoughts on this. (yes, I know xkcd!).
> 
> Best, 
> 
> Melvin
> 
> 
> 
> On Aug 27, 2024 17:01, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> The open social web is making great strides, but we're seeing varied efforts with different trade-offs.
> 
> ActivityPub is federating at scale, reaching millions with solid moderation. Nostr, though smaller with 10k-20k DAUs, offers a rich playground for R&D with advanced features like zaps, encryption, and app portability. IndieWeb is driven by passionate folks focused on interop, specs, and running code. Solid blends social with personal data storage, standards-compliant and hopefully WG-bound soon.
> 
> Yet, we lack a unified data model to bridge these efforts seamlessly. Some promising bridges exist—Alex Gleason’s “Ditto” between Nostr and ActivityPub, and Bridgy unifying across systems, even touching Bluesky. But there's no consistent, extensible, and interoperable spec that allows everything to just work together.
> 
> The promise of standards has often fallen short—things built outside the standard, or standards not quite fitting needs. For instance, adding a second "Nip-05" identifier in Nostr could take ages to agree on, despite being technically simple. Similar issues linger in Solid, even with its theoretically compliant system.
> 
> We’re not reaping the full benefits of standardization, though they’re within reach. Maybe it's time for a few of us to craft a unified W3C social web spec. We need a flexible template where developers can build freely, rapid prototyping in a permissionless environment, with specs that don’t require months of consensus. Backward compatibility, unihibited development, and a an outlet to unlock new waves of creativity, could be the result of a clean unified social spec
> 
> Would love to hear your thoughts on this. (yes, I know xkcd!).
> 
> Best, 
> 
> Melvin
> 
> 
> 
> On Aug 27, 2024 17:01, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> The open social web is making great strides, but we're seeing varied efforts with different trade-offs.
> 
> ActivityPub is federating at scale, reaching millions with solid moderation. Nostr, though smaller with 10k-20k DAUs, offers a rich playground for R&D with advanced features like zaps, encryption, and app portability. IndieWeb is driven by passionate folks focused on interop, specs, and running code. Solid blends social with personal data storage, standards-compliant and hopefully WG-bound soon.
> 
> Yet, we lack a unified data model to bridge these efforts seamlessly. Some promising bridges exist—Alex Gleason’s “Ditto” between Nostr and ActivityPub, and Bridgy unifying across systems, even touching Bluesky. But there's no consistent, extensible, and interoperable spec that allows everything to just work together.
> 
> The promise of standards has often fallen short—things built outside the standard, or standards not quite fitting needs. For instance, adding a second "Nip-05" identifier in Nostr could take ages to agree on, despite being technically simple. Similar issues linger in Solid, even with its theoretically compliant system.
> 
> We’re not reaping the full benefits of standardization, though they’re within reach. Maybe it's time for a few of us to craft a unified W3C social web spec. We need a flexible template where developers can build freely, rapid prototyping in a permissionless environment, with specs that don’t require months of consensus. Backward compatibility, unihibited development, and a an outlet to unlock new waves of creativity, could be the result of a clean unified social spec
> 
> Would love to hear your thoughts on this. (yes, I know xkcd!).
> 
> Best, 
> 
> Melvin
> 
>