Post #4353144

2026-08-01 11:24 UTC

@riverpunk@defcon.social This is excellent! There are way too many alternatives that can’t even spit out a simple HTML page (Solid, cough cough) after years of development. They’re shiny toys for protocol enthusiasts. Document editing is a particular need that isn’t met - I don’t care where something is hosted if it yeets a grant application into the void half an hour before the deadline, or can’t handle two whole editors at a time. Too many announcements about FLOSS go something like “Introducing Greeble 3.5! Now with more florp! You can mash the pronation setting to 11 with a fneeth command!” and no mention of what the thing actually does.

Replies (1)

@riverpunk@defcon.social 2026-08-01 11:43

@akareilly@hachyderm.io I'm currently working on various ways to describe the essence of what the Social Web (fediverse) is, without all the "protocol" junk in it. And what I've come up with is something along the lines of: """The Social Web was designed like this because it prevents enshittification. How? Because it has escape bridges built in. If one of the websites "goes bad", you can jump ship without leaving your friends. When Instagram went bad, there were no bridges, so we're all still stuck there. The Social Web can never go bad, because there will always be a new place to escape to; a new better option."""" People get to obsessed with ActivityPub or AT Protocol, XMPP or Matrix, or whatever the hell else, when the important thing is just this: "Does the system have escape bridges?" Literally all of the rest of the details only matter in *very* technical discussions, and should not be spoken of in front of a regular audience. It's like some of these tech people forget that people are listening to them when they talk about stuff. So yeah, obsessing over a protocol while failing to implement the practical usefulness of it is really disappointing.

Open ##4353143