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Notices tagged with bridgy
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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
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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
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Great article on #POSSE by David Pierce (@davidpierce@mastodon.social @pierce) @Verge:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon
Several key points of POSSE explained in the article:
First, post on your own site:
“In a POSSE world, everybody owns a domain name, and everybody has a blog. (… a place on the internet where you post your stuff and others consume it.)”
Second, syndicate elsewhere, appropriately for each destination:
“Then, your long blog post might be broken into chunks and posted as a thread on X and Mastodon and Threads. The whole thing might go to your Medium page and your Tumblr and your LinkedIn profile, too. If you post a photo, it might go straight to Instagram, and a vertical video would whoosh straight to TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. Your post appears natively on all of those platforms,”
You can use Bridgy Publish (https://brid.gy/) to POSSE to many destinations, and Bridgy Fed (https://fed.brid.gy/) to #federate to #Mastodon and other #fediverse destinations, directly from your site instead of posting a copy on yet another account on yet another server.
Third, and this is a key piece that distinguishes proper POSSE setups, with original post perma(short)links back to your posts on your domain:
“typically with some kind of link back to your blog.”
All copies link to (your) home.
"And your blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet."
You have power over your domain (name), not outside silos.
David embedded a screenshot of one of my posts, a reply post:
in which I posted a reply *on my own site*¹ to @Zeldman.com’s tweet (itself a reply to a POSSE copy of one of my posts), and POSSEd my reply to Twitter so it would thread with his reply.
This illustrates another important detail of a proper POSSE setup:
Fourth, post *replies* and other responses from your own site, whether to other #IndieWeb sites, or to others’s silo posts (tweets etc.).
Own your data means owning your replies as well.
David also noted several challenges and good questions about POSSE. Some of these have answers & established practices, others are areas of exploration. E.g.
"The first is the social side of social media: what do you do with all the likes, replies, comments, and everything else that comes with your posts?"
The short answer is #backfeed: https://indieweb.org/backfeed
Backfeed is a concept I first wrote about as “reverse syndication”².
As you syndicate your posts out to #socialMedia silos, you reverse syndicate any responses there back to your original post.
Your site can do this with a service like #Bridgy, which uses the #Webmention standard to forward such silo responses back to your site, and #BridgyFed which does same for responses from Mastodon to your #federated posts.
David asked many other questions, which are deserving of their own posts to help answer, so I’ll leave you with just one more:
"The most immediate question, though, is simply how to build a POSSE system that works."
The short answer is: just start³.
Even if you have to do it manually (until it hurts), even if you have to edit your posts on a static GitHub site (behind your domain name of course), and then copy & paste to your silo(s) of choice, just start.
By practicing POSSE, even manually, you will learn what aspects of POSSE & backfeed matter the most to you, what aspects actually involve reaching & responding to friends and others you care about.
By doing so you will naturally focus on setting up & making what you need, and you too can join the future of web publishing, today.
Questions? Join us in the chat: https://chat.indieweb.org/ (also on Discord, IRC, and Slack⁴)
This is day 46 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days
← Day 45: https://tantek.com/2023/289/t1/bridgyfed-webmention-like-fediverse
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Post glossary:
backfeed / reverse syndication
https://indieweb.org/backfeed
Bridgy
https://brid.gy/
make what you need
https://indieweb.org/make_what_you_need
manual (until it hurts)
https://indieweb.org/manual_until_it_hurts
original post link
https://indieweb.org/original_post_link
own your data
https://indieweb.org/own_your_data
own your replies
https://indieweb.org/own_your_replies
permalink
https://indieweb.org/permalink
permashortlink
https://indieweb.org/permashortlink
POSSE
https://indieweb.org/POSSE
silo
https://indieweb.org/silo
social media
https://indieweb.org/social_media
static site
https://indieweb.org/static_site
start
https://indieweb.org/start
Webmention
https://indieweb.org/Webmention
¹ https://tantek.com/2023/253/t2/
² https://tantek.com/2010/034/t2/diso-2-personal-domains-shortener-hatom-push-relmeauth
³ https://tantek.com/2023/001/t1/own-your-notes
⁴ https://indieweb.org/discuss