@danieldekay

This is part two of my response to Filip’s questions.

1. For ActivityPub, I would prefer Mastodon because of its simplicity, polished UX, and huge community behind it. The size of the existing community was especially important to me because it secured the platform’s future development.
2. I like the idea you’ve presented, which is that website content and events can be shared by the federation.

Apps & Fediverse

Oh, what a bummer this is: there are no super polished native mobile apps for most of Fediverse’s platforms and services. Why? Because creating and maintaining mobile apps is expensive, and most of these fediverse services are made by volunteers. Except, for the time being, Mastodon, which actually has some more severe funding, plus momentum and growth. This lead to many apps being created, and you can find them on the Apple iOS AppStore, or the Google store.

Not all of these are good, and many are “clones” of each other — but there are some gems. But what seems to also be happening is that there is a “Mastodon API for Apps“, which is not ActivityPub (learn more here, too), but something else, which allows front-ends to be built for a Mastodon server.

And it turns out: the Mastodon API seems to also be supported by Friendica, partly. Not all Friendica features are in the Mastodon API, but enough to be able to read, like and comment on posts in your Friendica feed using most of the mobile apps for Mastodon. Some things aren’t working, like direct messages, or setting permissions for circles, but even most Friendica channels appear as Lists in a Mastodon App.

Currently I am using two mobile apps: IceCubes App (free, open source) and Mona App (free for very basic use, or one-time purchase and free updates) — i like both, and they both have different way of presenting the Friendica data so they are complementary. You can also add multiple accounts there, and switch easily, which I do: I have my Tangoverse Friendica account, and also a few Mastodon acounts for different areas of “interest”.

But: from the backend side, Mastodon is no Friendica (yet?): Groups are only accessible as workaround, and Events are not presented as events (e.g. no RSVP function, no calendar, …), and the permission control is more like Twitter than Facebook.

For a federated Tangoverse, there is room for both: if anyone wants to setup a tango dedicated Mastodon server: go ahead! It won’t matter where you have an account, we can all talk to each other.

Wait a minute: why a tango-dedicated server? What’s behind that?

When you have an account on a Fediverse server, you usually have three ways of seeing content:

1. Your feed: this contains all content of people who you follow. This is “your inbox”, like an email inbox.
2. Your local server’s feed: this contains all content that is shared by people on your server with “public” visibility.
3. Your local server’s access to the global Fediverse feed: this contains all public posts that your server has access to, which mostly means content from other servers that is followed by someone on your server. This doesn’t mean everything that the Fediverse has to offer!

And #2 above is why a tango-specific server, or a network of highly connected servers make so much sense: they create a tango feed that anyone can tap in to, even if they don’t follow everyone.

Wait, there is more: inter-connectivity of websites using open protocols

Friendica can also follow websites, if they publish a RSS feed. What’s that? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is the protocol that blogs used in the early days of the internet so you could subscribe to these sites using a feed reader. It was also used by news publications, and many other services. Back then, we called all that the “Web 2.0”, which basically meant inter-connectivity and inter-operability for web sites and web applications — before the monolithic social media platforms came and swallowed everything, monopolizing content and monetizing personal data.

What kind of web sites support RSS? Every WordPress site, for example, and even wix.com pages, too. And we have quite many of these sites in the current Tangoverse already: tango blogs, teacher’s and school’s sites, event pages. They can all be added as feeds to Friendica — either as a feed by an interested reader, or if it’s your site, by automatically sharing new posts through your own account.

WordPress also has an ActivityPub plugin, which allows your site to be a Fediverse account, and you can be followed by anyone, and you can follow others, and even interact with your WordPress site with the fediverse. Plus: the “Event Bridge” allows tango event calendars to become ActivityPub ready – and participating in the Fediverse and Tangoverse.

So: we don’t have to start from scratch, but just have to rediscover a lot of what we have lost in the Facebook era.