Context
It isn’t often that you get to watch a new protocol go through real world growing pains. ActivityPub is the relatively young protocol behind many of the decentralised social networking initiatives available today. Sometimes collectively referred to as the Fediverse, these instances all rely on various implementations of ActivityPub to communicate.
In this short talk, I cover a little of the history behind the protocol. I lean heavily on email as an example of how protocols endure, but also as an example of how the challenges we face have evolved. Social networking as we know it may appear successful but it has limitations. Do these limitations amount to a “broken” internet and can a protocol like ActivityPub fix things.
This is a re-recording of a tech talk that I gave at work. In the live version we ended up drawing out various views on social networking in general and the implications and worries that people had. Unfortunately this re-recording lacks any of that discussion.