Farewell to the fediverse
In December 2023, this blog joined the fediverse (pt_BR). Thanks to a WordPress plugin — the publishing platform used by Manual do Usuário — it became possible to follow updates here without leaving Mastodon, Pleroma, GoToSocial, or any other application compatible with the ActivityPub protocol.
Over nearly two years the plugin has improved a lot. And it’s set to improve further, judging by the developers’ roadmap, to the point that — if all goes well — it may one day be possible to turn blogs into full actors in the fediverse.
Despite that, I plan to remove ActivityPub support soon. Here’s why.
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The situation today is a bit messy. The implementation works, but it’s confusing. A basic example: there isn’t a “profile” page for the Manual in the fediverse. That makes sense: the blog itself is the web presence. What doesn’t make sense is how someone used to other social platforms and to Mastodon itself is supposed to find the blog in the fediverse without a “Follow” button to click.
(The workaround is to use search or find a way to follow @blog@manualdousuario.net. Even for me it’s awkward and clumsy.)
A more technical and worse problem is that ActivityPub is a distribution model, not a remote information access model. As Rob Shearer explained:
The important technical point is that ActivityPub is (again, among other things) a protocol for one instance to tell another “I am interested in the following kinds of posts from you, so please send them to me when you see any” and for that other instance to periodically say “here are some posts you’re interested in”. Obviously there’s lots of technical detail, but what matters is that it’s not (primarily) a mechanism for accessing remote information; it’s a way to asynchronously distribute data so that the data is available locally.
It’s a subtle distinction, but enough to separate social platforms from blogs. Blogs are already “social” by nature (comments) and have established distribution channels (RSS).
In practice, ActivityPub’s distributive nature replicates content across a multitude of servers (every server where someone follows the blog), which, while not catastrophic here, is at least inefficient.
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Given that — and the fact that few people follow and almost nobody interacts via ActivityPub — I’ve been considering removing Manual from the fediverse for several months. I held off because, until the end of August, there was no way to do it. It was only in version 7.3.0, released on the 28th, that the plugin gained a self‑destruct feature.
That feature is important to notify other servers that Manual is no longer in the fediverse. It’s the formal, proper way to say goodbye to the fediverse: to remove profiles and ask other servers to stop “pulling” posts from here.
I imagine some people got used to following Manual via ActivityPub. That’s why I’m publishing this notice in advance so the message reaches anyone it may concern. ActivityPub support will be disabled next Friday (9/26). I invite anyone who wants to keep following me on the fediverse to find me on Mastodon at @manualdousuario@mastodon.social. I echo almost everything published on Manual there.
That is sad to read :(
I understand most of your points and I am willing to listen and/or help to improve the findability and the UI and I am also happy to support you in letting pages look like profile pages (I think this is theme territorry and very hard up to impossible to do through the plugin… at least if it should look nice… so maybe we simply need some more blocks!?).
Maybe what you describe is also an advantage, in a similar way how RSS works. ActivityPub is unobtrusive and is simply existent. It does not change how you write posts and replies look the same as local comments. Why not keep the plugin activated, but do no longer promote it. Maybe we have everything together for a nice UI in some month!?
Regardless of the outcome: Thanks a lot for staying with us for the last two years and all your feedback and bug reports! I really appreciate(d) that ♥️
First of all, thanks and congrats for your monumental work, Matthias! ActivityPub plugin’s development pace and overall quality is outstanding.
My gripe is more a philosophical one. I have trouble figuring out my blog’s places in fediverse, you know? Maybe I got too used to Mastodon (ie. timeline-based blogs), that when I see a post from Manual there it looks out of place. (I feel the same when I stumble upon a Ghost or WriteFreely post, as well.)
This is how I’m doing right now. I guess it doesn’t hurt to keep it activated a little longer :)
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As a side note, I don’t use Gutenberg/blocks in this site, and don’t plan to change that in the foreseeable future. I know AP offers a follow button blog since ever, but have no idea how to or even if it’s possible to use it without a block. Is it?