You heard about #Decentralized Platforms, but have you heard of "Federated" Platforms and "ActivityPub" before?

Lets dive deep into #Mastodon and break down all these Social Concepts!

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1/ ActivityPub is gaining momentum

We have many platforms that have or are integrating #ActivityPub.

An example would be #Meta which is working on a new service codenamed P92 which will carry the Instagram branding and support ActivityPub which is what #Mastodon uses.

3/ How ActivityPub Works

#ActivityPub users are typically represented as an “Actor” which refers to an account on a server.

In the image shown, the word “Inbox” and “Outbox” is easy to understand - it is like email where you can get messages or send messages respectively.

4/ Why ActivityPub?

ActivityPub is enabling interoperability/interconnectedness within Social Networks.

In the future, a very real possibility would be that you only require one account and you are able to engage with other users on different platforms with ActivityPub.

5/ A Comparison to other Similar Concepts

So how does #Mastodon compare to other Social Networks such as those using blockchain such as #LensProtocol, or those using a peer to peer network or known as Relays such as #Nostr?

The diagram best describes how we see them.

6/ Breaking Down the Social Architecture

While protocols/applications such as #LensProtocol #lenster allow users to “delete” their own posts by hiding it, the fact that it is immutable means that once it is recorded on-chain, it cannot be censored or removed.

7/ Comparison!

We look at #LensProtocol #lenster in comparison to #Mastodon, where although on Mastodon we remove the power off a single central party, and split it into many parties, the server owner is still able to censor your content and even delete your account.

8/ Comparison! pt2

Whereas for #Nostr, if a relay where your content is posted to chooses to block your content, you can still host your own relay and your content would still be discoverable.

9/ The Social Dilemma

Although there are even more trade-offs for each platform/protocol/technology, we can roughly categorize the way we view social networks in the image above.

We call this the “Social Dilemma”.

#Web3 #Social

10/ Introducing Mastodon

#Mastodon is an ActivityPub powered platform.
And although there are cons to this platform, there are also several good points about it.

Lets break down the terminologies frequently used on #Mastodon.

11/ Signing up on Mastodon

When signing up on #Mastodon, you are required to choose a server/provider.

You are shown some rules which are set and enforced by the server moderators. Each server will have their own set of rules and users are supposed to abide by those rules.

12/ Feed on Mastodon

On #Mastodon you have several ways to view your feed.

13/ Powers of Server Admins/Moderators

It is important to note that your account is at the mercy of the admins/moderators of the server that you are on.

The server moderator can only moderate a user on their server, and not on other servers.

14/ I am Scared of the Powers of an Admin...

Fortunately, if you are unhappy with your current server, you are able to migrate to other servers, with some inconvenience such as losing post history, losing people you follow (to be done manually), but your following remains.

15/ Importing and Exporting Data

You can export your data, but you cannot import data on a new account. This is because Mastodon currently does not support importing posts or media.

16/ How Mastodon deals with Spam

It is easier to prevent spam on #Mastodon as signing up requires a confirmed email address, and it is rate-limited by IP.

Furthermore there are even more ways to prevent spam on Mastodon such as blocking by email server and blocking by IP.

17/ More on Spam

On #Mastodon, moderators can also moderate their own server from other servers which is a convenient way of blocking large amount of users from another server they do not wish to have any interaction with.

This is known as a “domain block”.

18/ Some Data Relating to Mastodon & ActivityPub

There are a few “Fediverse” Platforms which you can try out here:
https://fediverse.party

Did you also know that #RSS3 had a sponsor with #Misskey? 
This was posted in July 2021!

twitter.com/rss3_/status/1420021384164614159

19/ Food For Thought

Although Mastodon is supposedly or arguably more decentralized as compared to a platform like Twitter, it is heavily reliant on the host of the server.

It does place a lot of risk into a single party.

20/ More Food, I'm Hungry!

In addition, Mastodon seems to be quite complicated at a few glance for a user to easily go onboard.

Because of the amount of “customization” you can do on it, a new user who is not used to Decentralized Social Networks might be overwhelmed by it.

21/ It's time for Dessert

At HashBrown Research our opinion is that social media is about connecting people, not about segregating users and making them jump through hoops to reach out to one another.

22/ Decentralization or Interoperability?

However, it is very clear that #ActivityPub has the benefit of increasing interoperability of different platforms, however, it is debatable if it sufficiently addresses the decentralization aspect that is much needed.

23/ What do we need?

The possibility of a #decentralized protocol that provides an infrastructure for these different systems to communicate and port over their data easily would potentially solve the problem of users on different architecture platforms.

2/ Breaking down ActivityPub

So what is #ActivityPub?

Its main concept consists of two layers which is the server to server federation protocol for sharing of information, and a client to server protocol so users can communicate with ActivityPub using their accounts on servers.