Nostr Web Client

I think that #nostr get a lot of things right, that mastoston doesn't.

First of all the problem of mastodon is that it feels "empty". If you join a big instance you might get more visibility, but then the problem is that:

- your data is on just one server, if it shuts down you can forget your data and network of people

- the server might not be always available or reliable

- your content might not be visible to some users who have their account on smaller instances.

Basically the ActivityPub protocol doesn't offer the features of modern social networks. It offer more features than a pure blogging platform, but not as much as a social network.

Moreover mastodon is not really decentralized, as much as it is federated. Unless you run your own server, you are very much dependent on whoever runs your mastodon instance. In a way it's even worse than with commercial social networks, because that person could decide to shut down the server just "because" since they are not motivated by profit.

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Discussion

twen 1y ago

My understanding is that ActivityPub is a protocol to transfert activities, not content (a post, an image, a video...), between servers (instances). Users and content, and type of content are defined within the servers and may be not supported by another instance, even if ActivityPub does.

ActivityPub is more capable than what we think, because of Mastodon being the biggest player, but not using all features (yet ?). The protocol could run a social network (I think), but applications are not or very very slowly discovering what they could do with it.

I feel that each application is first looking internally what they could offer, not thinking of the protocol capabilities.

(example : you have different icons to "like"/"favourite"/... a post in Misskey. This granularity is supported by ActivityPub, but no Mastodon instances understand it, neither pixelfed or lemmy. One Mastodon user will not see all "like" icons set by Misskey users).

I had accounts on a pixelfed (photo posts) , a kbin (forum like), a peertube (video posts) instance. All 3 shut down with 18 months. All my posts are gone. (I have my original content 😉 ). It's really really easy to lose data today on any activitypub connected server, rather than a centralised commercial driven social network...