Final thoughts re: FediCon 2025
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As I write this, I’m sitting on an airplane flying over the Canadian prairies on my way home from Vancouver, BC.
What an amazing group of individuals, who took the time out of their extraordinarily busy lives to see, hear, and learn about the fediverse! The connections made and ideas discussed were so important, and you could feel the energy in the air.
You’d think after a solid six hours a day in a lecture hall would be enough, but at every opportunity in between, there were lively discussions about ActivityPub and the fediverse. It turns out when you get all of us in a group together we can talk and continue to talk about the open social web for ages.
I now have a to-do list about a kilometer long, they all need to get done ASAP!
Thank you to reiver@mastodon.social for organizing this conference, all of those who helped out and participated, and all those who attended.
From now on, whenever someone points a camera to me, I’ll picture jaz@toot.wales saying “say FEEEEEEDIVERSE”.
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ohms@mastodon.sdf.org sounds like mastodon.sdf.org needs to upgrade their Mastodon server!
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@julian right....
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@julian beautiful thoughts, thanks for attaching pics of the after party!
Again thanks to @reiver for bringing us all together for #FediCon2025
@jaz saying exactly that is my happy closing memory of the day
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Videos at !fedicon_videos@spectra.video
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@devnull Did you happen to speak to anyone about the future of SocialHub while at FediCon? Did your impressions match what Johannes reported in the reboot vs. shutdown topic?
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@devnull Did you happen to speak to anyone about the future of SocialHub while at FediCon? Did your impressions match what Johannes reported in the reboot vs. shutdown topic?
strypey@socialhub.activitypub.rocks I spoke to quite a few people at fedicon about this exact issue.
Many feel that some sort of discussion platform is needed, but for one reason or another SocialHub is not that platform.
They did often agree with my assertion that discussion of activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.
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julian:
for one reason or another SocialHub is not that platform.
I'm curious to hear those reasons in some detail, ideally from the horses mouth. Whether here, in the verse (I'm @strypey at mastodon.nzoss.nz), or elsewise (contact info in the profile for that account). That helps us figure out what needs to be done differently. No need to worry about upsetting me, I respect absolute candour, and commit to replying both honestly and respectfully.
julian:activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.
I agree. As @how said in the against fragmentation topic, SH is part of the fediverse. But it also offers things that ephemeral micro-posting chatter doesn't, not least permanent archiving for later reference, and an entry point for newbies. If it's not doing a good job, let's talk about why, and do something about it.
One thing we could experiment with, if you're keen, is a complete mirror of the existing SH using NodeBB. With full archives, and full federation so anything posted to one can be read on both. That way people can use their forum interface of choice to participate (as well as being able to use other apps via AP federation). It also ends the problem of the existing SH being a SPoF, and thus a source of tension and territorial conflict.
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julian:
for one reason or another SocialHub is not that platform.
I'm curious to hear those reasons in some detail, ideally from the horses mouth. Whether here, in the verse (I'm @strypey at mastodon.nzoss.nz), or elsewise (contact info in the profile for that account). That helps us figure out what needs to be done differently. No need to worry about upsetting me, I respect absolute candour, and commit to replying both honestly and respectfully.
julian:activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.
I agree. As @how said in the against fragmentation topic, SH is part of the fediverse. But it also offers things that ephemeral micro-posting chatter doesn't, not least permanent archiving for later reference, and an entry point for newbies. If it's not doing a good job, let's talk about why, and do something about it.
One thing we could experiment with, if you're keen, is a complete mirror of the existing SH using NodeBB. With full archives, and full federation so anything posted to one can be read on both. That way people can use their forum interface of choice to participate (as well as being able to use other apps via AP federation). It also ends the problem of the existing SH being a SPoF, and thus a source of tension and territorial conflict.
There is no existing, up-to-date exporter for Discourse to NodeBB. One would have to pay someone to do it.
While we (the royal we, NodeBB Inc.) would gladly take your money, you’re better off sending it to nitro-porter, whose migrator is OSS.
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Yeah. I have no idea how to follow SocialHub discussions Mastodon account. I see this post because I'm following you, but it's disembodied -- I don't see the rest of the thread. And I can search for @community@socialhub.activity.rocks but its profile is empty.
Not only that, If I'm reading it over there, and see something I want to reply to from here, doing the "copy this URL" trick doesn't work. Does that mean I'm not in the fediverse??? Hard to know, but in any case I haven't yet figured out how I can participate in discussions there except by replying to somebody I follow.
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Yeah. I have no idea how to follow SocialHub discussions Mastodon account. I see this post because I'm following you, but it's disembodied -- I don't see the rest of the thread. And I can search for @community@socialhub.activity.rocks but its profile is empty.
Not only that, If I'm reading it over there, and see something I want to reply to from here, doing the "copy this URL" trick doesn't work. Does that mean I'm not in the fediverse??? Hard to know, but in any case I haven't yet figured out how I can participate in discussions there except by replying to somebody I follow.
jdp23@neuromatch.social I don’t want to get overly technical about it, but that’s due to fixable deficiencies in Discourse’s AP integration.
I think you should be able to follow the @community@socialhub.activity.rocks actor, no?
The “copy URL” flow is especially prevalent on the fediverse, but Discourse doesn’t support it (neither does Ghost, while I am talking about it.)
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@julian@community.nodebb.orgI don't want these posts cluttering up my home feed, I just want to be able to read and participate in the conversations. On Bluesky there's an ATProto feed that's got a bunch of discussion, I can check it when I feel like it (and people who want to can add it to their home feed) and reply
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@julian@community.nodebb.orgI don't want these posts cluttering up my home feed, I just want to be able to read and participate in the conversations. On Bluesky there's an ATProto feed that's got a bunch of discussion, I can check it when I feel like it (and people who want to can add it to their home feed) and reply
@julian Also, speaking of fixable deficiencies, my edits here don't seem to propagate to SocialHub . Without knowing the code I'm confident it's fixable because my edits did propagate to the NodeBB thread at https://community.nodebb.org/topic/18932/final-thoughts-re-fedicon-2025/14 , great to see!
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julian:
for one reason or another SocialHub is not that platform.
I'm curious to hear those reasons in some detail, ideally from the horses mouth. Whether here, in the verse (I'm @strypey at mastodon.nzoss.nz), or elsewise (contact info in the profile for that account). That helps us figure out what needs to be done differently. No need to worry about upsetting me, I respect absolute candour, and commit to replying both honestly and respectfully.
julian:activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.
I agree. As @how said in the against fragmentation topic, SH is part of the fediverse. But it also offers things that ephemeral micro-posting chatter doesn't, not least permanent archiving for later reference, and an entry point for newbies. If it's not doing a good job, let's talk about why, and do something about it.
One thing we could experiment with, if you're keen, is a complete mirror of the existing SH using NodeBB. With full archives, and full federation so anything posted to one can be read on both. That way people can use their forum interface of choice to participate (as well as being able to use other apps via AP federation). It also ends the problem of the existing SH being a SPoF, and thus a source of tension and territorial conflict.
strypey:julian:
discussion of activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.
I agree. As @how said in the against fragmentation topic, SH is part of the fediverse.
imo this is one of those points that sounds better than it actually is. being "on the fediverse" or "part of the fediverse" is a meaningless term without providing specifics. what actually matters here is the distribution and aggregation of resources (posts, threads, and so on). it's not broadly useful to have discussions about activitypub "on the fediverse" if those discussions never end up being seen by the people who want to see them.
for a discussion to end up on socialhub, one of the following needs to happen:
- either someone notifies socialhub that their post should be aggregated
- or socialhub crawls the fediverse and proactively aggregates posts
again, it's a distribution problem. keeping socialhub "in the loop" is necessary if you want your post to end up on socialhub. this can happen via fedi or it can happen via web ui. but it's automatic if you do it via the web ui, whereas if you do it via fedi you have to remember to send your post to the appropriate actor. the UX of participating in actual threads and including aggregators is very bad in the current fedi softwares -- usually, you have to include a mention of the actor who manages the thread in every single post you care to end up there, and there isn't a straightforward way to make that actor aware of old posts. this is why federation without any additional considerations is bad -- it leads to context collapse. you can't consider only federation, but instead you need to consider federation how, and with whom, and with which expectations.
for these reasons, i can't agree that "discussions of activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse" unless/until the fediverse becomes aware of the concept of discussions as separate from reply trees, and subsequently knows where to send all relevant notifications.
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strypey:
julian:
discussion of activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse itself.
I agree. As @how said in the against fragmentation topic, SH is part of the fediverse.
imo this is one of those points that sounds better than it actually is. being "on the fediverse" or "part of the fediverse" is a meaningless term without providing specifics. what actually matters here is the distribution and aggregation of resources (posts, threads, and so on). it's not broadly useful to have discussions about activitypub "on the fediverse" if those discussions never end up being seen by the people who want to see them.
for a discussion to end up on socialhub, one of the following needs to happen:
- either someone notifies socialhub that their post should be aggregated
- or socialhub crawls the fediverse and proactively aggregates posts
again, it's a distribution problem. keeping socialhub "in the loop" is necessary if you want your post to end up on socialhub. this can happen via fedi or it can happen via web ui. but it's automatic if you do it via the web ui, whereas if you do it via fedi you have to remember to send your post to the appropriate actor. the UX of participating in actual threads and including aggregators is very bad in the current fedi softwares -- usually, you have to include a mention of the actor who manages the thread in every single post you care to end up there, and there isn't a straightforward way to make that actor aware of old posts. this is why federation without any additional considerations is bad -- it leads to context collapse. you can't consider only federation, but instead you need to consider federation how, and with whom, and with which expectations.
for these reasons, i can't agree that "discussions of activitypub topics should take place on the fediverse" unless/until the fediverse becomes aware of the concept of discussions as separate from reply trees, and subsequently knows where to send all relevant notifications.
a, we may be talking about slightly different things.
My assertion is that discussions about ActivityPub should take place on the fediverse*.
I think you are asserting that SocialHub discussions shouldn’t take place on the fediverse.
And so sure, there is zero ability for SocialHub to proactively pull in posts, but that’s a failure of the software, not of the fediverse in general. (FWIW that failure is present in NodeBB too, even though we do have existing discovery tooling.)
I’ll admit that it’s hard to consume long running discussions on typical microblogging software, and additional steps need to be taken to keep SH in the loop, but that doesn’t mean discussions don’t happen there.
Because you know as well as I do that discussions do happen there organically, and often, too.
* Additional considerations about “which fediverse” is out of scope of this statement
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agreed that it's not broadly useful to have discussions that aren't seen by people who want to see them. It's a two-way problem, keeping SocialHub in the loop and keeping everybody else in the loop as well. It's a good example of what I was talkingn about in the other thread: it's useful to get input on the question of whether or not SocialHub discussions are currenlty meaningfully "on the fediverse" from people who don't have SocialHub accounts!
I'm not sure you need to be able to fully pull in discussions that are happening elsewhere ... for example a link aggregator that combines links to interesting discussions elsewhere with discussions of its own that others can participate isn't as smoothly integrated but could still be useful.
Being able to have threaded, categorized long-form discussions that people who have accounts elsewhere can broadly participate in certainly seems like something that a lot of people want. If that's not possible with current fediverse software then (a) that's disappointing but also (b) now's as good a time as any to work on improving it and this is as good a use case as any.
By contrast it seems to me that most of the potential audience doesn't want non-federated threaded, categorized long-form discussions enough with the people currently active on SocialHub to participate on any kind of regular basis on SH.
