Notices tagged with bluesky

Tantek ()'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 16:18:00 EST

Tantek

A couple of days ago in an informal discussion in the #indieweb chat channel about how different people view #Mastodon, the #fediverse, or #Bluesky, and services like #Bridgy & #BridgyFed quite differently, I noted¹ that one big unspoken difference was how things on the web last over time, from the traditional persistent web, vs the newer and growing ephemeral web.

There is the publicly viewable #OpenWeb that many of us take for granted, meaning the web that is persistent, that lasts over time, and thanks to being #curlable, that the Internet Archive archives, and that a plurality of search engines see and index (robots.txt allowing). The HTML + CSS + media files declarative web.

Then there are the https APIs that return JSON "web", the thing that I’ve started calling the ephemeral web, the set of things that are here today, briefly, gone tomorrow. I’ve previously used the more provocative phrase js;dr (JavaScript required, Didn’t Read) for this #ephemeralWeb, yet like many things, it turns out there is a spectrum from ephemeral to persistent.

One popular example on that spectrum that’s closer to the ephemeral edge is anything on a Mastodon server running v4 (or later as of this writing) of the software. (I’m not bothering to discuss the examples of walled garden social media silos because I expect we will continue to see their demise² over time.)

For example, the Internet Archive version of the shutdown notice for the queer(.)af Mastodon server, is visibly blank:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240112165635/https://queer.af/@postmaster/111733741786950083

Note: only a single Internet Archive snapshot was made of that post.

However if you View Source, you can find the entirety of that #queerAF post duplicated across a couple of invisible-to-the-user meta tags inside the raw HTML:

"**TL;DR: Queer[.]AF will close on 2024-04-12** …"

[.] added to avoid linking to a dead domain.

Note: such meta tags in js;dr pages were part of the motivation to specify metaformats.

To be clear, the shutdown of queer(.)af was a tragedy and not the fault of the creators, administrators etc., but rather one of the unfortunate outcomes of using some ccTLDs, country-code top level domains, that risk sudden draconian rules, domain renewal price hikes, or other unpredictable risks due to the politics, turmoil, regime changes etc. of the countries that administrate such domains.

Nearly the entirety of every Mastodon server, every post, every reply, is ephemeral.

When a Mastodon server shuts down, all its posts disappear from the surface of the web, forever.

Perhaps internet archeologists of the future will discover such dead permalinks, check the Internet Archive, find apparent desolation, and a few of them will be curious enough to use View Source tools to unearth parts of those posts, unintentionally preserved inside ceremonial meta tags next to dead scripts disconnected from databases and an empty shell of a body.

All reply-contexts of and replies to such posts and conversations lost, like threads unraveled from an ancient tapestry, scattered to the winds.

If you’re reading this post in your Mastodon reader, on either the website of your Mastodon account, or in a proprietary native client application, you should be able to click through, perhaps on the date-time stamp displayed to you, to view the original post on my website, where it is served in relatively simple declarative HTML + CSS with a bit of progressive enhancement script.

Because I serve declarative content, my posts are both findable across a variety of services & search engines, and archived by the Internet Archive. Even if my site goes down, snapshots or archives will be viewable elsewhere, with nearly the same fidelity of viewing them directly on my site.

This design for longevity is both deliberate, and the default for which the web was designed. It’s also one of the explicit principles in the IndieWeb community.

If that resonates with you, if creating, writing, & building things that last matter to you, choose web tools, services, and software that support the persistence & longevity of your work.

#persistentWeb #longWeb #LongNow

This is post 10 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

← https://tantek.com/2024/035/t2/indiewebcamp-brighton-tickets-available
→ 🔮

Post glossary:

API (Application Programming Interface)
https://indieweb.org/API
Bluesky
https://indieweb.org/Bluesky
Bridgy
https://brid.gy/
Bridgy Fed
https://fed.brid.gy/
ccTLD (country-code top level domain)
https://indieweb.org/ccTLD
curlable
https://indieweb.org/curlable
declarative web
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/webvision/full/#thedeclarativeweb
Internet Archive
https://archive.org/
js;dr (JavaScript required; Didn’t Read)
https://tantek.com/2015/069/t1/js-dr-javascript-required-dead
JSON
https://indieweb.org/JSON
longevity
https://indieweb.org/longevity
Mastodon
https://indieweb.org/Mastodon
metaformats
https://microformats.org/wiki/metaformats
permalink
https://indieweb.org/permalink
principles in the IndieWeb community
https://indieweb.org/principles
progressive enhancement
https://indieweb.org/progressive_enhancement
reply
https://indieweb.org/reply
reply-context
https://indieweb.org/reply-context
robots.txt
https://indieweb.org/robots_txt
social media
https://indieweb.org/social_media
silo
https://indieweb.org/silo
View Source
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/view_source/index.html

¹ https://chat.indieweb.org/2024-02-13#t1707845454695700
² https://indieweb.org/site-deaths

Tantek ()'s status on Monday, 11-Sep-2023 19:06:00 EDT

Tantek

going to the #SocialWeb CG meeting @W3C #w3cTPAC tomorrow (2023-09-12) at 09:30 CEST.

Looking forward to seeing @evanp.me (@evan@cosocial.ca @evanpro) and many others!

So many advances in #ActivityPub, #Webmention, Micropub, #IndieAuth etc. that it may be time to restart the #SocialWebWG to officially update all our active specifications.

We can & should also reach out to #Bluesky & #Nostr communities to work together on shared semantics and bridging protocols to continue growing a heterogenous #fediverse built on the #OpenWeb.

We know it is possible. We worked hard in the Social Web working group to align a lot of semantics across #ActivityStreams and #microformats2. The fruitful results of that are services like http://fed.brid.gy/ which I myself use to send a Webmention when I make a new post (like this one) and have #BridgyFed automatically federate it via ActivityPub using my personal site identity to #Mastodon followers and others.

@snarfed.org wrote up a recent comparison of top #decentralized #socialProtocols that can help inform a lot of this discussion: https://snarfed.org/2023-09-04_50856

LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw48a1)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Dec-2022 21:20:57 EST

LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}

https://500ish.com/mastodon-brought-a-protocol-to-a-product-fight-ba9fda767c6a

#Medium link; don't be surprised if it does weird things before showing you the article.

"Mastodon brought a protocol to a product fight"

> Yes, yes, the network is under immense strain as people flee the Elon strain infecting Twitter. But come on, there are folks who really believe this is going to replace, or even stand alongside Twitter, as a massively scaled social network? I call bullshit. While it’s impressive that millions of users have apparently given Mastodon a try, the product is far too slapdash and clunky to keep folks engaged. A lump of coal.

No, it isn't meant to be a #Twitter replacement. Keep your Twitter account until you no longer want it--or the company closes and the site shuts down--you can use Mastodon alongside Twitter.

And the #Fediverse networks are much more than just #Mastodon. Don't think you have experienced the network and all it has to offer if all you've done is briefly tried to use Mastodon, because you haven't experienced it.

> I’ve somehow avoided signing up for the service up until now. Largely because signing up was and is so comically obtuse — pick your server everyone, hope you choose wisely!

Have you not used e-mail? It works the same way. You pick a server, such as Gmail or Outlook dot com, and sign up. Please tell me you realize that the people you communicate with are not all on the same e-mail service that you use.

> But, but, it’s not a product, it’s a protocol. Yeah, that’s a nice thing to say. And to believe in. But I truly believe the ship has sadly sailed for such idealism in this space. Jack Dorsey can talk about how this should have been what Twitter was from the get go until he’s bluesky in the face. It’s just not going to happen. And he’s more to blame for that than most everyone else. As is he for the Elon element of this current equation. But that’s a different story.

Okay, so how about this story: Twitter has only been profitable two or three years of its entire history. Since it started, it has existed by burning through investors' funds. Eventually, with or without Elon Musk's ownership, that runs out. Without such funding, their corporate-centralized ( #corpocentric ) model cannot exist very long. And same for their centralized competitors, such as Post.news, Gab, Parler, and so on. What is left is either #federated or #peer-to-peer approaches, where no single entity is responsible for funding and managing the entire network. So whether it is the #Fediverse ( with #ActivityPub and #OStatus and their successors ) & the Federation ( with #Diaspora ) or #Bluesky, or #Twister, or #NOSTR, the eventual future of #socnets is #decentralized, if not entirely peer-to-peer unless a national government takes over Facebook and Twitter in order to provide effectively unlimited resources. It is the protocol that makes it possible for thousands or millions of instances to displace and replace one big centralized instance.

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Tantek ()'s status on Saturday, 23-Feb-2019 23:10:00 EST

Tantek

🌄 Yesterday morning@Nov_Project_SF, (1) 7:03 #sunriseat the aptly named Grand View Park, (2) 6:44 #dawn’s light #purpleto #orange19 minutes beforehand, at the same time (3) #moonsetover an offset rainbow #gradientfrom clear #bluesky to #yellow(without any green), orange, #red, purple, blue, to a #greenband kissing the deep #PacificOceanblue.

#NPSF#novemberprojectsf#novemberproject#fromwhereIrun#wakeupthesun#lensflare#running#run#stairsforbreakfast#stepsforbreakfast#California#SF#SanFrancisco#optoutside#latergram#yestergram#nofilter#2019_053

Tantek ()'s status on Monday, 18-Feb-2019 23:27:00 EST

Tantek

🌇🌴 #DoloresPark #sunrise this morning at #NPSF.
1 #lensflares #sunbeams and #palmtrees
2 #bluesky and an orange lit #downtown #skyline
3 #workout #chalkings: #raceeverything #thisshitisgood #whatispainfrenchbread

Tantek ()'s status on Tuesday, 11-Apr-2017 01:34:26 EDT

Tantek

Yesterday’s beach views. Ocean to Sutro Baths. And a couple of fearless Stow Lake ducks. #latergram #nofilter

#seeononmyrun #ocean #beach #bluesky #littlepuffyclouds

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Notices tagged with bluesky