Re: Towards a Unified Open Social Web Spec

On Wednesday 28 August 2024, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> st 28. 8. 2024 v 5:57 odesílatel Aaron Gray <aaronngray@gmail.com> napsal:
>
>> Hi Melvin,
>>
>> Please don't be put off there's still lots of furtile ground within
>> ActivityPub and JSON-LD, and extensions to Activity Streams to bring
>> existing extensions https://swicg.github.io/extensions-policy/ within a
>> meta framework, where the nonstandardized can be "standardised based on
>> source or destination domain and a JSON-LD description.
>>
>
> Hi Aaron,
>
> Thanks for the encouragement. The topic of ActivityPub extensibility came
> up during the 2014 Paris face-to-face, during the Working Group. There was
> a proposed AP extension system, and I argued that JSON-LD already had an
> in-built extension mechanism, so we could leverage that. Fortunately, my
> argument prevailed at the time.
>
> However, ActivityPub did diverge slightly from the JSON-LD standard in the
> end, which complicates interop. This is one reason to revisit and
> potentially create a clean, standard-compliant system that can fully
> realize the promise of standards—interoperability across all the diverse
> parts of the social web.
>
> Meta descriptors sound interesting—metadata underpins HTTP and much of the
> web. There’s already significant standardization in this space. Could you
> elaborate on what you mean by meta descriptors and how you see them driving
> standardization and interoperability?
>
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Aaron Gray
>>
>> On Tuesday 27 August 2024, 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
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Aaron Gray - @AaronNGray@fosstodon.org | @aaronngray@threads.net
>>
>> Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher,
>> Information Theorist, Amataur Computer Scientist and Environmentalist and
>> Climate Science Disseminator.
>>
>>
>>

-- 
Aaron Gray - @AaronNGray@fosstodon.org | @aaronngray@threads.net

Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher,
Information Theorist, Amataur Computer Scientist and Environmentalist and
Climate Science Disseminator.