mastodon meta (fairly important)
gargron is now on record as saying that the mastodon api is only for mastodon
https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/101489738840502100
what this basically means is that the mastodon ecosystem of apps, helpful tools, etc will only ever be reliably compatible with mastodon with the rest of us jumping through hoops to try to reverse engineer it
so, in summary, a community that is allegedly federated actually does have an avenue through which one platform can control it. just fact.
makes u think?
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@scarly part of me wants to say that the federated part isnt the part where clients interact with the servers, its where the servers interact with eachother.
But the other part of me wants to point out that mastodon could absolutely be implementing a form of the activity pub client/server API standard rather than using its own proprietary one for whatever reason it was decided.
The fact that AP is,, fun to implement,, only makes this problem worse.
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@TheHottestPotato the ActivityPub specification defines server to server communication as well as server to client communication. without the clients to create the activities, nothing would be federating. the two elements are both necessary in order for AP to work.
the AP specification does stop short of providing for the things that mastodon's api provides for. however, to me, it would make more sense to modify the specification than splintering the fediverse
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@scarly oh I know that it defines a client/server communication, that was what I was talking about in the second paragraph.
I just do feel like its a bit inaccurate to say that the client-server communication and toolchain is part of federation. It does make the ecosystem more painful when its not consistent though I will absolutely give you that. I dont think there are any (usable) pure AP clients that exist?
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@TheHottestPotato you can't have a usable pure AP client because AP doesn't define a large part of what you need to make software usable
interfaces for posting, moderation, etc - these require an api. you seem to be suggesting that this is not part of federation. pedantically speaking, sure, but realistically speaking - the simple act of pushing messages between servers is useless without an interface for people to manipulate those messages in meaningful ways
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@scarly @TheHottestPotato I'd argue the situation you're describing with Mastodon/AP is exactly how email, the first successful federation system, operates. Every mail user agent has to make up its own bespoke APIs in order to compose, mark things as spam etc. The basic protocols for transmission (SMTP) and storage (IMAP) allow everything to work, but literally every client has to re-invent the wheel for everything else.
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@drzaiusx11 @TheHottestPotato analogies aren't the best way to talk about this, but ill bite.
an email client is not the same thing as the api for an instance of mastodon. what you're talking about is more on the level of Tootdon or Toot! than it is on the level of mastodon. we're talking about different levels of abstraction.
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@scarly @TheHottestPotato Agreed that the analogy breaks down for older standalone email clients, but is still applicable w.r.t. webmail.
SMTP+IMAP is AP. With webmail if you want to write an email you need an API to another server for that. That's a bespoke api specific to the webmail client. Thats like mastodon.
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@scarly @TheHottestPotato The difference with mastodon is that its all one big server instance whereas in email this is usually broken up by protocol: Sendmail for SMTP, Dovecot for IMAP, some bespoke API server for your webmail (squirrelmail server etc)
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@scarly @TheHottestPotato its not disingenuous, this is the exact scenario for webmail.
Mastodon is an API server with a web client. Gmail has its own API, if you want to make a new Gmail front-end you're at the mercy of them changing things on you. Same with squirrel mail, roundcube or rainloop.
I'm not saying its ideal or even a good situation, but its exactly how things have worked in the realm of federated software for 50+ years (in the case of email.)
mastodon meta (fairly important)
@drzaiusx11 @TheHottestPotato
if thunderbird suddenly changes how it works, then that affects thunderbird users. if mastodon changes its api, then that affects other instance servers that are mastodon compatible, all mastodon tools, all proprietary and non proprietary apps. there are a ton of side effects in this scenario that create work downstream and can cause a loss of interoperability.
it's disengenious to suggest that an API is the same as an email client.