(2023-10-16) Erlend Group Convergence

Erlend Sogge Heggen: Group Convergence. Groups as both a formal ActivityPub spec and general concept deeply invigorate me. I previously wrote about group-to-group following (FEP-d36d) as the missing glue layer to successfully transition /r/rust to the threadiverse.

Today I wanna talk about what a common implementation of Groups as defined in FEP-1b12 can do for the fediverse at large.

If I have the right read on how groups are being implemented in the microblog-paradigm, they're gonna give the local content of an instance's network more structure and discoverability

By far the most popular implementation of ActivityPub Groups to date is Lemmy. It's also unique in its strictly group (boards) centric design.

Because of its mainstream adoption, I believe Lemmy should be looked to as the canonical interoperability test of any new groups implementation

Lemmy, which modeled itself after Reddit, a place where lots of people were congregating.

I for one am finding myself increasingly at home in the threadiverse. That said, it feels unnecessarily separated from the fediverse which undergirds it.

There are pending integration issues on the side of Mastodon and Lemmy respectively. Especially on the Lemmy side there's an ongoing debate regarding the extent to which it should be Mastodon-compatible. I'm strongly in favor, because it strengthens the fediverse network as a whole when content can be doubly amplified.

Mastodon, Lemmy & friends are at the precipice of a brand new social networking experience defined by app symbiosis.

Unix-philosophy Everything-app

The ActivityPub protocol is uniquely well suited to realize the kind of “everything app” that WeChat popularized

But unlike the monocultural borg-like approach of those identity proprietors, an ActivityPub-based everything-app will actually be made up of multiple apps operating in unison, joined together by Juicy Clients.