I am an entrepreneur, small business owner, author, and researcher. I am also working on an open source project called Neuhub.
I am posting from Hubzilla with Neuhub via ActivityPub.
For those on traditional social media, I just say “What if Facebook and Twitter and YouTube could all talk to each other? People on Facebook could follow people on Twitter and people on Twitter can follow people on Facebook.” Then they usually reply “that would be neat” and then I tell them “yeah, that’s what we are building over here in the fediverse.”
It usually is easier to give them an analogy related to something they are familiar with.
To create something like this, you would need to federate two components, and optionally a third.
You would also need to create a standard (a protocol) for the app store to talk to the websites hosting the applications.
Application Hosting: Basically, everyone can create their own website with their own apps. That part would be unmoderated, similar to how you can go to a software publisher’s website today and download a Windows program. They publish their application and data about their apps in a machine readable way where an app store could take that data and create a listing.
The App Store: There would be open source app store code that allows people to run their own app store. The people operating an app store decide what gets listed in the app store. Some app stores will be for a particular niche while some will attempt to list everything. For example, you might have app stores that only have open source software. This would still make the app store operator the gatekeeper, but what is different here is that anyone could use the same software and set up their own app store.
Curation Groups: This allows people or groups to create their own curated list of approved apps. This provides the app stores a shortcut so they don’t have to review every single app themselves. This would allow individuals, communities, associations, and even businesses to create moderated lists of apps they reviewed and believe should be listed in app stores. Mastodon could publish a curated list of Mastodon Apps they recommend. Open source organizations could create a curated list of apps they recommend. The app stores could consume such lists.
People can then choose the app store and the apps they trust. App stores can choose the curated lists they trust.
This is similar to how podcasting platforms work, where a podcaster publishes their audio files and an RSS feed with information about their Podcast, and various Podcast Directories list their podcast. Or similar to how platforms like Steam work, where they list games, many of which can be obtained on the game author’s website as well. The key point being that the authors of the apps can get listed in multiple app stores.
Optionally, both the Application Hosting software and App Store can be integrated with protocols like ActivityPub, AT Protocol, or Nomad/Zot protocol for the purpose of sending out notifications to followers who may be interested in updates and news about the apps or the app store. At the very least, it should list an existing fediverse handle where people can follow them.
So, yes, it can be federated.
To be safe and secure, you would want multiple organizations with resources to run competing app stores using this software and protocol. These organizations can be non-profits, cooperatives, or even small businesses. The reason why is because an organization is more likely to have the resources to moderate the list of apps in their App Store, whereas an individual most likely would not, unless that was their full time job.
Whereas anyone who created an app could run their own website with information about their app, and then request to be listed in various app stores and curated lists.
I think this a great idea!
Why is it so expensive to federate Bluesky?
Mostly because it depends on certain centralized services. You can create your own apps and even host your own content, but the discovery and distribution system has a copy of every post so that it is easy to access by everyone. The positive side is that you don’t have to worry about missing replies in the conversation since their centralized database has a copy of it. The downside is that hosting such a massive database is expensive.
You also have to consider that some servers are very politically-oriented, and if your political beliefs are not aligned with the administrator or community, then you are likely to get banned or if not banned, made to feel unwelcome. This applies to the left, right, up, or down on the Nolan chart. It is their right to do so, since it is their server, but the result is usually echo chambers that repeat the same talking points. If you like to debate policy, then these are not the communities for you.
If you want to discuss different points of view, you need to find a community that actually wants to debate the issues. Or run your own server and find like-minded friends to talk with.
We never know what the future holds. But one of our goals is to decentralize social media. If we wind up with only a few major players, we have failed in that goal.
A marketplace of apps is actually a good thing. Not everyone wants something based on Twitter (i.e. Mastodon, and similar). Not everyone wants Reddit (Lemmy, Mbin, etc.). Not everyone wants a traditional forum (NodeBB). Not everyone wants a blog (WordPress, Hubzilla, etc.). Not everyone wants Facebook (Friendica, Hubzilla, etc.).
One of the goals is to build increased compatibility between apps so that you can choose which experience you want, yet can still talk to anyone else on the fediverse. Some big players will certainly emerge, but I think that there will always be hundreds of compatible apps.
For some reason, links from a Lemmy top-level post do not show up in Hubzilla. Here is the link for anyone who does not see the link.
#[1](https://forum.wedistribute.org/topic/9/we-distribute-is-always-looking-for-help)
If you are going to encourage cooperatives, you would need one or more organizations that help people set them up. That way people can learn how to start their own, and what it takes to run one. There are legal considerations, such as taxes and registering the cooperative. And some people would need to learn accounting and leadership skills. This is all learnable, but if we want people to succeed, we would need to help guide them.
For those who are not on Lemmy and can’t see the link on the original post:
#[1](https://theconversation.com/decentralised-social-media-offers-an-alternative-to-big-tech-platforms-like-x-and-meta-how-does-it-work-podcast-249758)
Good to see some recognition of long-form post platforms.
Even though many fediverse users would not be interested on this, I could see a use case for this.
@astro_ray It’s not my profile. I just picked one at random. :)
@Daemon Silverstein ActivityPub is mostly about sending posts and articles.
One relatively easy way to integrate ActivityPub might be to have the snippets be stored in some database on your website, and then have the option to create a post or direct message telling someone about the snippet. If the snippet is short, you could include a code block in the post, or you could provide a link back to the snippet on your website.
If you used something like Hubzilla, you could set permissions, controlling who can see the snippet or post. And, although not really designed for code snippets, Hubzilla does have webpages, articles, and wiki page that support code blocks. Although, now that you mention it, we probably could create an addon specifically for storing code snippets.
If you wanted to sync snippets or import between servers or accounts, that would require more advanced techniques, some of which are not really available over ActivityPub.
@Daemon Silverstein What features are you looking for in particular? An interface that stores code snippets and organizes them would not be too hard to build.
The question is, what federated features would you like to have?
I am curious if you are just wanting to make social media post searchable, or making a search engine (that indexes URLs, including public fediverse posts).
For content discovery and importation, you might consider using RSS / Atom as a way if ingesting new content. It is tried and true, and a number of fediverse platforms and websites already support it.
This sounds interesting. I would love to hear about how it could integrate with other platforms.
The biggest issue is economies of scale. Browser engines generally require a lot more coding and maintenance than social media software does (unless you are engineering to be the next Twitter will millions of users). This means more people involved and more organization is required than your typical ActivityPub-related project.
There actually have been many alternate browsers proposed and built, but they usually wind up being abandoned because of the lack of adoption and the amount of work it takes.
And, depending on the type of changes you are making, sometimes it is better to just use what someone else has built and modify it. That is why we have Waterfox, Opera, Brave, and numerous other browsers that use Chromium or Firefox as the base. Why build an entire car, when you can repaint it, change out the seats, add a quality sound system, and swap out the wheels for something nicer?
I do think that there needs to be more choices for browser engines, but I am not sure decentralization is the right word. What we need is more competition, or put another way, more players. The standards are open, so anyone with resources can build a browser. It is a matter of whether people will use the new browsers.
True. But when talking to someone who lives on traditional social media, it is an explanation they would understand. Sometimes you have to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be.