Desired changes for a future revision of ActivityPub and ActivityStreams

[SorteKanin]

@trwnh

“Lemmy as an AP client” would work like this:

• You go to a Lemmy server
• Lemmy lets you browse different sublemmies (acting as a mini Web browser)
• You want to post, so you authorize against your AP server
• Lemmy lets you notify your followers whenever you make a post (via AP C2S POST to outbox)

This isn’t running on your phone. The Lemmy instance would be an AP client.

I don’t really understand how this works in practice - or rather maybe, how is this different from how Lemmy works right now? Is it only that you seem to be separating the AP server from the Lemmy “client”?

@trwnh

WordPress powers 43.5% of all sites, so I think it’s not too complicated to understand for the average user.

I would say the people making WordPress sites are already above-average when it comes to technical literacy. In general technical people (everyone here) vastly overestimate other people’s technical skill and literacy.

@trwnh

@SorteKanin

I simply disagree, it is not simple. Throwing out JSON-LD would simplify things.

How?

The spec would already be far easier to understand for the average developer if it used plain JSON. It would also be far easier to implement as you wouldn’t need to worry about any of the JSON-LD particularities and could rely instead on plain JSON libraries, of which there are plenty.

@trwnh

I think you’re confusing HTTPS URIs with JSON-LD.

I’m not sure I understand, what does what I said have to do with HTTPS URIs? What I would propose instead of JSON-LD is simply plain JSON with (for instance) UUID keys to ensure anyone can come up with their own new keys in a decentralized manner without worrying about conflicting with other keys.

@trwnh

I think this comes across as far more judgemental than anything I’ve said in the thread above. Granted, I’m being patient here and I’m spending more of my time on this conversation than I’d like. But the implication that this is “just discussing how to build stuff” as opposed to “actually building stuff” is something I find somewhat insulting or devaluing.

Sorry, I certainly didn’t mean to judge anyone’s intelligence or worth - it was more to say that anyone who does not reach a certain threshold of stubbornness/patience or available time are simply pushed out of these discussions by their sheer length. It’s a shame but I’m not sure how to make it more accessible. Tbh I think the linear flow of this forum as opposed to a tree of comments makes it seem more daunting (this is part of why I prefer reddit-like comment trees).

On building vs discussing, I am more inclined to an “agile” workflow. It is very difficult if not downright impossible to discuss and design our way to a good solution to any software problem ahead-of-time. Continuous feedback and iteration between the theoretical debate and the practical building is the better approach I think.

The feedback right now from the practical building side is that nobody is using JSON-LD and it doesn’t seem like many even want to. We need to take that feedback seriously. Standing fast on JSON-LD and contexts and ontologies and other (for the average developer, myself included) quite foreign concepts is not a feasible path forward.