ActivityPub and the End of Walled Gardens, with Evan Prodromou
Nov 28, 2023
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Evan Prodromou, creator of ActivityPub, explains how the protocol enables open-source social networks in the Fediverse. They discuss the importance of interoperability, the adoption of ActivityPub, decentralized innovation, and the role of advertising in the decentralized network.
ActivityPub enables a decentralized social media experience, fostering innovation and shifting from centralized platforms.
ActivityPub offers the potential to unbundle features from walled gardens and explore innovative ideas on the Fediverse.
Deep dives
The Birth of the Fediverse and Activity Pub
The podcast episode discusses the emergence of the Fediverse, a decentralized system of interconnected servers, and the importance of Activity Pub protocol in making it function. Activity Pub allows for moderation to be distributed, giving users more control over their experience and deeper engagement with communities. The hosts highlight how the Fediverse offers a more open social media experience, fostering innovation and bringing about a shift from centralized platforms. The episode also explores the history of Activity Pub's development, its authorship, and its role in enabling the persistence of relationships and the potential for advertising in the future.
The Role and Relevance of Activity Pub
The podcast delves into the significance of Activity Pub, emphasizing its simplicity and elegance as a protocol. It compares Activity Pub to two-way RSS, drawing parallels to the importance of building direct relationships and open standards. The episode highlights the opportunities for developers to integrate Activity Pub into their projects, employing existing libraries and gradual implementation. It also discusses the role of advertising in the Fediverse, its challenges in a decentralized environment, and the potential for innovative and respectful advertising models.
Unbundling and Innovating on the Fediverse
The episode emphasizes the potential for unbundling existing features found in walled gardens and highlighting innovative ideas on the Fediverse. It cites dating services and marketplaces as attractive and meaningful areas for exploring possibilities. The hosts also discuss the burgeoning growth of communities and groups on the Fediverse, where individuals can replicate experiences similar to popular services like Reddit. The conversation underscores the opportunities for decentralized innovation and the importance of building genuine connections between brands and customers.
The Future of Activity Pub and the Social Web
The podcast concludes by looking at the future of Activity Pub and the social web. It emphasizes the need to enhance the standard by focusing on aspects like client-to-server communication and encouraging developers to build incremental functionalities. The discussion highlights the parallels between the social web and other groundbreaking technologies like internet email and the web itself. The hosts express excitement about the potential for continued growth and development, emphasizing the significant role of Activity Pub in enabling open standards and genuine connections.
There was a time where people couldn’t email each other unless they were using the same email client. That changed when developers came up with a protocol that made it so it didn’t matter if you were using AOL or CompuServe or Prodigy — it just worked.
The same analogy explains how things work in the Fediverse, an open-source system of interconnected, interoperable social networks. The Fediverse is powered by a protocol called ActivityPub, which provides an API for creating, updating and deleting content across several platforms.
What does ActivityPub unlock for product builders and tech entrepreneurs? How will social networks without walled gardens change our relationship to content and to each other? Why does any of this matter?
In this episode, host Mike McCue talks to Evan Prodromou, one of the co-authors of ActivityPub. Evan is an entrepreneur, technologist and advocate of open source software. He’s also the Director of Open Technology at the Open Earth Foundation.