Into the Fediverse (Interview)

This week Evan Prodromou is back to take us deeper into the Fediverse. As many of us reconsider our relationship with Twitter, Mastodon has been by-and-large the target of migration. They helped to popularize the idea of a federated universe of community-owned, decentralized, social networks. And, at the heart of it all is ActivityPub. ActivityPub is a decentralized social networking protocol published by the W3C. It is co-authored by Evan as well as; Christine Lemmer-Webber, Jessica Tallon, Erin Shepherd, and Amy Guy. Today, Evan shares the details behind this protocol and where the Fediverse might be heading.

Discuss on Changelog News

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Featuring:

• Evan Prodromou – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, Website
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• ActivityPub - W3C Recommendation (23 January 2018)
• PeerTube
• Twitter says it’s intentionally blocking apps like Tweetbot
• Changelog.social
• Mastodon Roadmap
• The Changelog #257 with Evan Prodromou
• Medium embraces Mastodon

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - This week on The Changelog
(01:07) - Sponsor: Postman
(02:22) - Start the show!
(05:21) - What's the story of ActivityPub?
(10:10) - Mastodon's relationship to ActivityPub
(14:14) - What makes a social network sticky?
(22:40) - Twitter's ads are the worm
(31:29) - Mozilla and Tumblr support for ActivityPub
(32:31) - What is Mastodon getting right?
(38:16) - 4 out of 5 ActivityPub authors are women
(43:25) - The promise of social networking
(48:55) - The confusion of federated
(55:04) - Implementing new features
(58:09) - What's lacking?
(1:03:32) - Where do noobs go?
(1:07:51) - Let's talk scaling
(1:11:36) - Where is the roadmap?
(1:14:20) - Closing out the show
(1:15:49) - Outro