Networks

Centralised networks

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked in, etc are centralized networks. The company, Meta, for instance, has al the control of what you do.

For instance:

you want to follow a friend on instagram:.

following your friend , zuch likes it

1. you send a message to instagram telling I want to follow my friend
2. instagram send a message to your friend telling 'X want to connect'
3. your friend tells a message to instagram that it is ok
4. instagram makes the connection, but all your messages to your friend go through instagram

Other networks

Fediverse

The Fediverse is a network of social networking applications that communicate with each other via a set of protocols. The servers hosting an application are called a node or instance and can host multiple users.

The Fediverse is both a distributed and decentralized network. Here's why:

1. Decentralized: The Fediverse is not controlled by a single entity or server. Instead, it consists of many independent servers (instances) that operate autonomously. Each server can set its own rules, policies, and moderation standards. This decentralization ensures that no single point of failure or control exists.
2. Distributed: The Fediverse is a network of interconnected servers that communicate with each other using open protocols like ActivityPub. Users on one server can interact with users on other servers, creating a distributed network of communities. This distribution allows for resilience and scalability.

In summary, the Fediverse is decentralized because there is no central authority, and it is distributed because the network is spread across multiple interconnected servers.

via IFTAS

ActivityPub

ActivityPub is a decentralized communication protocol that allows different social networks and online platforms to talk to each other. It’s like a common language that lets users on one platform interact with users on another platform, even if those platforms are run by different organizations or individuals. Think of it as email for social networks—just like you can send an email from Gmail to Yahoo, ActivityPub lets you send messages, posts, or other content from one social network to another.

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How Does ActivityPub Work?

What is ActivityPub, and how will it change the internet?

"It’s a language that any application can implement. For example, there’s a YouTube clone called PeerTube that also implements ActivityPub. Because it speaks the same language as Mastodon, a Mastodon user can follow a PeerTube user. If the PeerTube user posts a new video, it will show up in the Mastodon user’s feed. The Mastodon user can comment on the PeerTube video directly from Mastodon.

With traditional internet media, you need to rely on external services to share your work on social networks. If you want people to share your YouTube video around, you need to post it to Facebook or Twitter. But ActvityPub-enabled applications are social by nature. A PeerTube video can be shared or liked by default by users on Mastodon. A Plume blogger can build an audience on Mastodon or PeerTube without any additional effort since Mastodon and PeerTube users can follow Plume blogs natively. Users on all these platforms see content from the other apps on the platform of their choice. And Mastodon, PeerTube, and Plume are just the beginning – as more platforms begin implementing ActivityPub, the federated network grows exponentially."

1. Decentralized Network:
   • Instead of one big company (like Facebook or Twitter) controlling everything, ActivityPub allows many smaller, independent servers (called instances) to connect and share content.
   • Each instance can have its own rules, community, and focus, but they can still communicate with other instances.
2. Actors and Activities:
   • In ActivityPub, everything revolves around actors (users, groups, or even bots) and activities (actions like posting, liking, or following).
   • For example, if you post something on your platform, it’s an activity that gets sent to your followers, who might be on the same platform or a different one.
3. Federation:
   • Platforms that use ActivityPub are part of a federated network. This means they can share content with each other without being owned by the same company.
   • For example, if you’re on Mastodon (a social network that uses ActivityPub), you can follow someone on PeerTube (a video platform that also uses ActivityPub), and their videos will show up in your feed.
4. Open Standards:
   • ActivityPub is an open standard, meaning anyone can use it to build their own social network or app. This encourages innovation and prevents one company from having too much control.

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What Prospects Does ActivityPub Create?

1. Decentralized Social Media: ActivityPub enables the creation of decentralized social networks like Mastodon, where users aren’t tied to a single company. This reduces the risk of censorship, data misuse, and monopolies.
2. Interoperability: Platforms using ActivityPub can interact with each other. For example, you could comment on a video hosted on PeerTube from your Mastodon account, or share a blog post from WordPress to a social network.
3. User Control: Users can choose which instance (server) to join based on their preferences (e.g., privacy-focused, topic-specific). If they don’t like the rules of one instance, they can move to another without losing their connections.
4. Innovation: Developers can build new apps and services that work seamlessly with existing ActivityPub platforms. For example, a new photo-sharing app could integrate with Mastodon, allowing users to share photos across both platforms.
5. Resilience: Because the network is decentralized, it’s harder for it to go down completely. If one server goes offline, the rest of the network keeps running.
6. Privacy and Freedom ActivityPub gives users more control over their data and who they interact with. It also reduces reliance on big tech companies, promoting a more open and free internet.
7. Community Building: ActivityPub allows for niche communities to thrive. For example, a server could be dedicated to artists, programmers, or activists, and still connect with the broader network
8. fediverse.info | The bespoke fediverse guide. . add a tag to your profile and make yourself to be found in a directory
9. Bridge applications like for instance Fedilab | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository that allows for multi app accounts. This one, supports Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed, Misskey, GNU Social, Pleroma, Friendica. OpenVibe

check if it is true:

1 You can add yourself to a server and make yourself findeable like claudia@art@digital (so ppl know I am claudia, work with digital art?

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Real-World Examples of ActivityPub in Action:

Fediverse projects - Join the Fediverse

fediverse/delightful-fediverse-clients: A curated list of apps, for mobile and desktop, for accessing accounts in the Fediverse network (based on ActivityPub). - Codeberg.org

• • Mastodon - hashtag#Ruby based twitter clone - Follow friends and discover new ones among more than 2M people. Publish anything you want: links, pictures, text, video. All on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free.
  • Mastodon Glitch Edition (glitch-soc) - a Mastodon fork with additional features such as rich text formatting and local-only toots
  • Hometown - a lightweight fork of Mastodon that supports local-only toots and more content types
  • PixelFed - PHP based instagram clone. A free and ethical photo sharing platform.
  • Peertube - Javascript based youtube clone. A decentralized video hosting network, based on free/libre software
  • Matrix
  • Lemmy - Link aggregator, reddit clone.
  • Movim - Social Network based on XMPP
  • Soundstorm Soundstorm is an audio-oriented federated social network that speaks ActivityPub. Users can upload their own music, comment on others' tracks, and like/follow/mention just as in a regular social network. Since it speaks the same language as federated platforms like Mastodon, Soundstorm can send new track upload posts to users' followers on the fediverse, allowing them to gain a greater reach than a conventional social audio service.
  • Prismo - A ruby based reddit clone. Federated link aggregation powered by ActivityPub.
  • Pleroma - Elixir based Twitter clone. The server side is more lightweight than Mastodon, and the UI is more customizable too.
  • Akkoma - a Pleroma fork with more features and a faster pace of development
  • Diaspora - Ruby based Facebook clone.
  • WriteFreely - Go based publishing platform. WriteFreely is free and open source software for starting a minimalist, federated blog — or an entire community.
  • Friendica - PHP based facebook clone. Friendica is a decentralised communications platform that integrates social communication. Our platform links to independent social projects and corporate services.
  • Hubzilla
  • FunkWhale - Python based Grooveshark. A self-hosted tribute to Grooveshark.com.
  • Cobalt - Ruby Video platform by same owner as Mastodon (hasnt' been updated in at least 5 years)
  • ActivityPub for WordPress - An ActivityPub plugin for WordPress.
  • ActivityPub for Drupal - An ActivityPub module for Drupal.
  • Cactus Comments - Federated comment system for the open web built on Matrix.
  • Epicyon - ActivityPub server, designed for simplicity and accessibility. Includes calendar, news and sharing economy features to empower your federated community.
  • GotoSocial - fast and efficient ActivityPub server written in Golang, still in alpha

Protocols

There are many, but here a link of apps using activitypub emilebosch/awesome-fediverse: A curated, collaborative list of awesome Fediverse resources

• ActivityPub - The hashtag#ActivityPub protocol is a decentralized social networking protocol based upon the [ActivityStreams] 2.0 data format. It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and content.
• Litepub , Diaspora, WebMention,
• Zot - Zot is the revolutionary protocol that powers Hubzilla, providing communications, identity management, and access control across a fully decentralised network of independent websites, often called "the grid". The resulting platform is a robust system that supports privacy and security while enabling the kind of rich web services typically seen only in centralized, proprietary solutions.
• Friendica - The Portable Contacts specification is designed to make it easier for developers to give their users a secure way to access the address books and friends lists they have built up all over the web.
• Portable Contacts - The Portable Contacts specification is designed to make it easier for developers to give their users a secure way to access the address books and friends lists they have built up all over the web. Specifically, it seeks to create a common access pattern and contact schema that any site can provide, well-specified authentication and access rules, standard libraries that can work with any site, and absolutely minimal complexity, with the lightest possible toolchain requirements for developers.
• WebFinger - WebFinger is used to discover information about people or other entities on the Internet that are identified by a URI using standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) methods over a secure transport. A WebFinger resource returns a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) object describing the entity that is queried. The JSON object is referred to as the JSON Resource Descriptor (JRD).
• Salmon - The Salmon Protocol is a message exchange protocol running over HTTP designed to decentralize commentary and annotations made against newsfeed articles such as blog posts. It allows a single discussion thread to be established between the article's origin and any feed reader or "aggregator" which is subscribing to the content. Put simply, that if an article appeared on 3 sites: A (the source), B and C (the aggregates), that members of all 3 sites could see and contribute to a single thread of conversation regardless of site they were viewing from.
• ActivityStreams - This specification details the serialization of a stream of social activities using the JSON format. Activities are important in that they allow individuals to process the latest news of people and things they care about.
• Magic Signatures - This document defines a lightweight, robust mechanism for digitally signing nearly arbitrary messages, along with a simple public key infrastructure.
• DFRN - The DFRN (pronounced dee-fern) framework provides the communication basis for a decentralised social network - where cooperating servers share information on your behalf while operating in a web of trust relationships you control. It can provide a “Facebook-like” experience without requiring a central company or server.
• WebSub - WebSub provides a common mechanism for communication between publishers of any kind of Web content and their subscribers, based on HTTP web hooks. Subscription requests are relayed through hubs, which validate and verify the request. Hubs then distribute new and updated content to subscribers when it becomes available. WebSub was previously known as PubSubHubbub.
• PubSubHubbub - PubSubHubbub is an open protocol for distributed publish/subscribe communication on the Internet. It generalizes the concept of webhooks and allows data producers and data consumers to work in a decoupled way.
• Pubcast - An experimental ActivityPub based podcasting platform
• Pubgate - Lightweight (Gotta Go Fast) ActivityPub federator

Useful

FediDB, Fediverse Network Statistics

#FediBuzz: Trends in the Fediverse

Glossary

fediverse.space

the federation - a statistics hub

sguzman/delightful-fediverse-apps

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