sure this is all very bad for activitypub but this is truly amazing content
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@jdp23 @seachanger @laurenshof I assume you mean Eugen, and I want to give him all due credit for trying to do better. I wish he'd started earlier, and I wish it was going faster, but he's been doing the right kinds of things for some time
My main point is that Eugen's had light-years more impact on Mastodon than Evan. Even with respect to AP's less-than-completely-positive (cough) impact on Mastodon, Eugen could have supported LitePub et al back in 2019ish -- or some other protocol change. And Eugen could have prioritized support for AP C2S. AP was in fact an improvement on OStatus when Mastodon adopted it in 2017, but it was Eugen's choice to do an EEE strategy and let it turn into a millstone.
I agree that Eugen 2026 has grown a lot in some ways from Eugen 2017 and even Eugen 2022 ... it's really hard for a founder to step away and pass the torch and he deserves a huge amount of credit for that. On the other hand local-only posts still aren't in Mastodon, admins still can't easily change the maximum post length, the documentation still talks about how allow-list federation is contrary to Mastodon's mission, I don't think he's ever changed his position on Meta's adoption of AP being "a huge victory for our cause" ... so I disagree on "he's been doing the right kinds of things".
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@seachanger saying that to CHRISTINE!?!
@laurenshof@indieweb.social @seachanger@alaskan.social I genuinely don't know either of the people (or that third person, either) in that conversation, even by name. And yet I came away with a very clear sense of who to trust on technical issues.
And it was not "I talk about this in my book" guy.
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My main point is that Eugen's had light-years more impact on Mastodon than Evan. Even with respect to AP's less-than-completely-positive (cough) impact on Mastodon, Eugen could have supported LitePub et al back in 2019ish -- or some other protocol change. And Eugen could have prioritized support for AP C2S. AP was in fact an improvement on OStatus when Mastodon adopted it in 2017, but it was Eugen's choice to do an EEE strategy and let it turn into a millstone.
I agree that Eugen 2026 has grown a lot in some ways from Eugen 2017 and even Eugen 2022 ... it's really hard for a founder to step away and pass the torch and he deserves a huge amount of credit for that. On the other hand local-only posts still aren't in Mastodon, admins still can't easily change the maximum post length, the documentation still talks about how allow-list federation is contrary to Mastodon's mission, I don't think he's ever changed his position on Meta's adoption of AP being "a huge victory for our cause" ... so I disagree on "he's been doing the right kinds of things".
@jdp23 @seachanger @laurenshof
Ok, well, I'd rather reinforce good behavior -
@jdp23 @seachanger @laurenshof
Ok, well, I'd rather reinforce good behavior@jenniferplusplus @jdp23 @laurenshof no doubt eugen has has an enormous practical impact on mastodon but Evan is just such a sparkling poster boy for the absolutely shittiest and most offputting part of this whole world
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@jenniferplusplus @jdp23 @laurenshof no doubt eugen has has an enormous practical impact on mastodon but Evan is just such a sparkling poster boy for the absolutely shittiest and most offputting part of this whole world
@seachanger @jdp23 @laurenshof
If I was forced to choose between all Evans or all Eugens, I'd choose Eugen in a heartbeat -
sure this is all very bad for activitypub but this is truly amazing content
@laurenshof I thought I was in a fever dream watching this play out yesterday.
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@seachanger @jdp23 @laurenshof
If I was forced to choose between all Evans or all Eugens, I'd choose Eugen in a heartbeat -
sure this is all very bad for activitypub but this is truly amazing content
@laurenshof people inquiring about privacy/security considerations seems like a real trigger point.
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@j0ebaldw1n Evan is one of the 5 coauthors of ActivityPub, together with Christine. He's also part of the Social Web Foundation, and is an active contributor to the current maintenance of AP at the w3c. the other 4 have largely left the work on AP (2 of them work on another protocol now), and Evan does most of the current work on AP
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sure this is all very bad for activitypub but this is truly amazing content
@laurenshof @cwebber @evan what I really like is the openness of it all.
On the signing issue, I'm with Christine. I like Evan's viewpoint for social systems, but not for digital systems with "complex system" mechanics and active intelligent threat actors.
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@j0ebaldw1n Evan is one of the 5 coauthors of ActivityPub, together with Christine. He's also part of the Social Web Foundation, and is an active contributor to the current maintenance of AP at the w3c. the other 4 have largely left the work on AP (2 of them work on another protocol now), and Evan does most of the current work on AP
@laurenshof @j0ebaldw1n and if you remember Identi.ca, the open source Twitter clone from like 2008, where the retweet button was invented, that was Evan too. He’s been doing the open source social media thing for a long time.
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@laurenshof @cwebber @evan what I really like is the openness of it all.
On the signing issue, I'm with Christine. I like Evan's viewpoint for social systems, but not for digital systems with "complex system" mechanics and active intelligent threat actors.
@promovicz @laurenshof It's "entertaining content" for sure, but what it also gets at is not just the technical side of things, but the social one, and how we are caught between both, and our systems are the output of the conflicts between technical goals and social dynamics.
@evan is my friend, and I'm not super proud of that exchange, because I lost patience publicly, because this is a sore issue for me. But of course, you tear things back, and Evan and I had a nice chat afterwards, and actually have hung out quite a bit before and since, and behind all of that, both of us were going through things in our personal lives.
And yet the decisions we make in these messy social dynamics influence the kinds of technical systems which in turn influence the kinds of social systems we can have!
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@promovicz @laurenshof It's "entertaining content" for sure, but what it also gets at is not just the technical side of things, but the social one, and how we are caught between both, and our systems are the output of the conflicts between technical goals and social dynamics.
@evan is my friend, and I'm not super proud of that exchange, because I lost patience publicly, because this is a sore issue for me. But of course, you tear things back, and Evan and I had a nice chat afterwards, and actually have hung out quite a bit before and since, and behind all of that, both of us were going through things in our personal lives.
And yet the decisions we make in these messy social dynamics influence the kinds of technical systems which in turn influence the kinds of social systems we can have!
@promovicz @laurenshof @evan It does worry me though, and there's a reason it's so personal to me. The lack of signing of messages and content-addressing have lead to serious issues that, while ATproto does worse than us on the aspects of power distribution, it does better in terms of content survivability and portability, and these are things I thought were important *all the way back in ActivityPub standardization*, but we couldn't get to yet.
There is no "technical problems vs social problems" dichotomy. Social situations influence technical design, and technical design informs the kinds of social systems that are possible. Protocol development is all of this, mass multiplied.
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sure this is all very bad for activitypub but this is truly amazing content
@laurenshof I think ActivityPub is inherently and irrevocably flawed due to a naive implementation and needs to be replaced with something that has performance and efficiency in mind (as a counterexample that handles performance at scale better, AT proto comes to mind; that one has its own issues but it does overall work a lot better)
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sure this is all very bad for activitypub but this is truly amazing content
@laurenshof I didn't think it was that bad at all.
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@laurenshof I think ActivityPub is inherently and irrevocably flawed due to a naive implementation and needs to be replaced with something that has performance and efficiency in mind (as a counterexample that handles performance at scale better, AT proto comes to mind; that one has its own issues but it does overall work a lot better)
@thomasfuchs @laurenshof So, naive implementations mean that the protocol is irrevocably flawed?
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@thomasfuchs @laurenshof So, naive implementations mean that the protocol is irrevocably flawed?
@evan @laurenshof It’s probably quicker and less work to make a new protocol based on lessons learned than try to fix it.
You’ll have to adopt clients anyway to upgrades to the protocol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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@promovicz @laurenshof @evan It does worry me though, and there's a reason it's so personal to me. The lack of signing of messages and content-addressing have lead to serious issues that, while ATproto does worse than us on the aspects of power distribution, it does better in terms of content survivability and portability, and these are things I thought were important *all the way back in ActivityPub standardization*, but we couldn't get to yet.
There is no "technical problems vs social problems" dichotomy. Social situations influence technical design, and technical design informs the kinds of social systems that are possible. Protocol development is all of this, mass multiplied.
@promovicz @laurenshof @evan And for whatever it's worth, I think there are solutions to these things. EITHER ActivityPub or ATproto could incorporate the good ideas of the other and solve the parts the other lack.
And I can write down to do it. And I have, scattered across bits and pieces.
But it requires getting ecosystems to move, and it's very depressing trying to do that. I don't have the time in my life to sit through meetings trying to convince them that they need to solve the problem right now. So I just focus on building the directions I think matter.
I could write it all down though, and let everyone else do the fighting to make it happen, I suppose.
But I don't have power over the ATproto or ActivityPub worlds, really. The implementers of both do, and both have huge stakes and biases towards their own things, and investments in the directions they already are convinced they should go. I have a say, and an ability to critique, and people listen to me, but only sort of.
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@promovicz @laurenshof It's "entertaining content" for sure, but what it also gets at is not just the technical side of things, but the social one, and how we are caught between both, and our systems are the output of the conflicts between technical goals and social dynamics.
@evan is my friend, and I'm not super proud of that exchange, because I lost patience publicly, because this is a sore issue for me. But of course, you tear things back, and Evan and I had a nice chat afterwards, and actually have hung out quite a bit before and since, and behind all of that, both of us were going through things in our personal lives.
And yet the decisions we make in these messy social dynamics influence the kinds of technical systems which in turn influence the kinds of social systems we can have!
@cwebber @promovicz @laurenshof I don't feel like things got that bad at all.
I continue to believe that verifying content when it's first read, rather than when it's first received, is a much more performant strategy. It causes a slight hit for the first reader, but it spreads out the stress on the remote server across time much better.
I also think trust metrics are good for networks.
I did promise you a blog post on the topic, though, @cwebber . I'll try to get that done next week!
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@evan @laurenshof It’s probably quicker and less work to make a new protocol based on lessons learned than try to fix it.
You’ll have to adopt clients anyway to upgrades to the protocol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs @laurenshof You should do that!
