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At this point I don't see much point in adopting something that doesn't support ActivityPub. I'd rather just use Mastodon/Pleroma/Akkoma with some heavy blocklists.


I've been looking at alternative implementations since I don't want to run the entire Mastodon app for just myself. The fact that every single ActivityPub implementation runs into so many interoperability issues, such that they have to be fixed to work with each other system one by one, is a sign to me that the protocol is either too complicated or not robust enough (probably both).

There is tremendous value in a much simpler protocol, especially if it can deal with the identity migration issues that Mastodon has faced since day one.


> so many interoperability issues [...] the protocol is either too complicated or not robust enough

From what I've read, it sounds like the interoperability issues come from not implementing AP the same way as Mastodon rather than anything specifically protocol-related. Hence, e.g., Pleroma going out of its way to be Mastodon compatible as a design goal and GoToSocial having lots of issues because it hasn't yet gone that route[1]

[1] e.g. they have an issue where some client apps don't work with GTS because GTS doesn't advertise a version number sufficiently high enough - because the apps are looking for "v > 2.10 because that's when Mastodon introduced feature Z".


I wouldn't say that. In practice, everyone tests Mastodon first since it is the most popular implementation.

Here are the ones gotosocial have issues with: https://github.com/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/projects/...

Not to say I don't believe you about Mastodon, I am sure they have their quirks as well.


A stupid simple message relay protocol can be used for stuff other than social media.

OTOH websockets are hard outside the browser :(


Maybe years ago but now Websockets are dead simple to use in virtually every language. Heck you can even pipe to a websocket server using websocat using the shell.


Websockets are almost trivial now if you just use a library


Actually, websockets are trivial full stop. I implemented a web socket proxy in C in a day by reading the excellent RFC (sure, there's weird shit in there, but it's not hard).




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