Let's turn aspiration into fact?

According to David Pierce at The Verge in a piece <https://www.theverge.com/24063290/fediverse-explained-activitypub-social-media-open-protocol> published today, the Fediverse is:

> … an interconnected social platform ecosystem based on an open protocol called ActivityPub, which allows you to port your content, data, and follower graph between networks. 

He continues:

> If you wanted to leave one platform for another, you could bring all your content, all your followers, all your everything with you.

This is aspirational compared to the state of implementation today, but a very reasonable aspiration IMHO. I would be prepared to argue that this aspiration — and a few other bit and pieces he isn’t mentioning — are essential to become real in order to deliver on the promise that people already think we are making. (Anecdotally I have found that many people believe this, not just David)

What are our aspirations in SWICG here, specifically with respect to future standards work?

It’s very important that we document what works today, I appreciate the people who are stepping up right now, and don’t want to distract from that.

But once we have captured the present, where are we going? As a straw proposal, I propose that we adopt the two above sentences from today’s Verge piece as a vision, e.g. as “We develop the standards (and whatever else is necessary) that make easily possible … (see above)”.

1. Does this vision sound reasonable to you?
2. How can this very straw-y proposal be improved?

P.S. Yes, I understand that we won’t (want to) squeeze Lemmy into Mastodon. So add the qualifier: within reason or such.

Cheers,




Johannes.

Johannes Ernst

Fediforum <https://fediforum.org/>
Dazzle Labs <https://dazzlelabs.net/>