Post #2346341

2026-05-07 10:10 UTC

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz @uriel@x.keinpfusch.net The diagram in my last blog post on Grassroots fediverse evolution directly relates to it.. https://coding.social/blog/grassroots-evolution TLDR it is unclear where protocol ends, and solutions built on top of it start. Post-facto interoperability drives evolution: First implementer has full freedom to either make a good design or a hack for any AP extension. Hacks prevail, as the own app has the primary focus. Fediverse is app-centric. The next implementer can either follow suite, or reinvent, patching or mending, perhaps create a new flavor. You can say that the fediverse was vibe-coded by humans. In-the-large the participants in the ecosystem are involved in a huge Big Ball of Mud anti-pattern, where interoperability becomes ever harder and involving ever more whack-a-mole development and maintenance workload to assure by how each other app is able to break yours.

Replies (1)

@smallcircles@social.coop 2026-05-07 10:34

@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz @uriel@x.keinpfusch.net I can see why "compatibility first" in your Aktor project is giving you frustrations when finding out what happens on the wire. 😅 The app-centric post-facto interop work method that prevails has a whole range of negative side effects. Everyone who creates an arbitrary AP extension becomes owner as it were of that part of the spec. And if the spec now works for their app they are no longer that incentivised to improve it, or even actively resist change, as that would be extra work. And the next person to adopt some existing AP extension is the technology decision maker to take on a foreign dependency, not unlike JS/TS NPM dependency hell world. But on protocol level. What we currently see is that precious few people really care about the ActivityPub protocol wrt its beneficial role for the ecosystem as a whole. People care to the extent it serves their own app. And for the current popular app platforms it does it well enough, and the devs mastered the complexity.

Open ##2346342