Post #1339721

2026-04-13 16:07 UTC

@evan It is not meant that way at all. I mean "any developer's personal choice at time of impl" because the standard allows such versatility. Since in this case you posed it to me its "you as a dev's personal choice". There are 3 options: 1. It is not standardized, everyone is free to choose. 2. There's an informal convention, turning de facto standard. 3. It is formalized, part of the standard. When saying "protocol decay" I always mean as the IETF doc on it defines it: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9413.html#name-protocol-decay On "evolution". Evolution to where? What are the common goals, the shared vision? When is something evolution vs. devolution if people are hemmed into a de facto standard full of app-specific choices made in the past? "I can't have more profile fields". Why? Does Linked Data restrict you, or does some app not handle more than N fields? The latter is protocol decay. I've been tooting about Emergence. Many emergent systems in Nature have no interesting outcome. What fedi is emerging?

Replies (1)

@smallcircles@social.coop 2026-04-13 16:18

@evan If after a bunch of years the AP dev community came all together in a big event and reflected on the past, suppose they might conclude: "We have evolved into a decentralized copy of existing big tech social media platforms." You can say that it is evolution, and you'd be right too. But is it the best evolution we could have had? Which branch of the Tree of Fedi Life did we grow? If now that branch can only form microblog-like sub-branches, is it evolution? Evolution is in the eye of the beholder. I am inclined even say that ActivityPub in its original raw potential constitute magic seeds for trees that over time will form a large forest, whereas fedi has branched from the single tree, and you can choose to be a sub-branch. Both can technically be said to constitute progress. But one has more power and promise for rich tapestry social web.

Open ##1339722