In the typical web marketing infrastructure, a company signs up for an email account for private messages, Twitter/X account for microblogging, YouTube account for video sharing, and Reddit for forum discussion.
With the Fediverse/ActivityPub model, currently a typical user might register a PeerTube account for video sharing, Mastodon for microblogging, and Lemmy for forum discussion. But the data under all those is the same infrastructure, right?
Facebook as a mature software platform has areas of its app for private messaging, microblogging, and video-specific content, all using one user account.
Is it likely that Fediverse apps will evolve toward a similar structure, where a person or company would only need one account and could push out content of all types there, and interact with others’ content with one account?
I doubt it. I admin a lemmy instance and a regular fediverse instance, and I use them both very differently, because their interfaces lend themselves to different uses. Even though they can communicate with each other, trying to navigate a large number of lemmy groups from Hajkey would be annoying, and trying to follow specific users from lemmy would be annoying.
An all in one app would mash that all together, which would probably be overwhelming and confusing
and a regular fediverse instance
what exactly is this other service you’re running?
But the cool thing about open standards is that there’s a clear pathway to creating an everything app. Especially if decentralized ids gain some traction, then we could have an app that combines mastodon and pixelfed but presents the different posts in a sensible way.
I can’t really wrap my head around what such an app could look like, but it’s much more feasible to build one than it would be with closed services. I’m hopeful that freedom to experiment without lockin will lead to some really neat ideas
There was an article in Foreign Policy a couple days ago talking about how China’s WeChat is the only real Everything App, but it was a product of a very specific time and place.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/31/elon-musk-wechat-twitter-x-united-states-everything-apps/
The conclusion is that there’s not likely to be another Everything App. I’m still thinking that over, but it sounds plausible.
No, you’re not quite understanding what ActivityPub is. The data under all the fediverse services is not the same infrastructure at all. The communication between those various services just uses the same language (ActivityPub). Those various services can interpret and store (or ignore) ActivityPub messages any way they want. Service instances add another layer to the whole thing as well.
In order for an “everything app” to be successful (if you buy the argument that it feasibly can be), it would have to be a centralized service. Decentralization, by its very nature, encourages the opposite of that – want to make some niche service because existing services don’t satisfy some fringe need you have, but still want to interact with others on other platforms? You can do that with the fediverse. But that also means your new service isn’t part of an “everything app”… it just can potentially talk to one that might exist.
This was a goal of ActivityPub but it’ll take a lot of work to get there. I’d love to see the fediverse evolve in the way you’re talking about but I don’t think it will while mastodon remains the dominant platform. The masto team did a partial EEE (they did the embrace/extend part) years before Thread was around and they’ve dominated the fediverse ever since and most people refer to this place as mastodon. The masto dev team has said multiple times they’re not interested in adding support for other content and they want to remain a microblogging service.
Other service have to remain compatible with mastodon to gain any traction which makes getting a new project off the ground more difficult. Lemmy was around for a couple years before the reddit migration and you’ll notice kbin is just about as big as lemmy despite the head start. Outside of some new huge event, the fediverse will probably continue on as it is for a while. I’m really hoping lemmy/kbin can gain a large enough userbase to throw some weight around and influence other projects development so we can see some evolution.
I don’t think we’re heading towards an everything app, but we may well see an everything account at some point. Companies already use social media management portals to post/respond on multiple platforms; I think if that kind of commercial demand arises for fediverse services, we will probably see similar fediverse management portals which allow you to interact with content on multiple ActivityPub services in a context-sensitive way via one account.