N3M

As of more recently:

• The identity system is still the same, keys aren't rotatable and still the core of your account. Outside of edge cases like Frost Bunkers (outsourcing key management to a cluster of third party servers), or platforms like DiVine letting you register with an email, keys remain pretty much the same.
• Private infomration like DMs have been altered. They're still E2E encrypted, but now only the people involved in the conversation can request a copy of the encrypted DM (I assume that's what you're referring to, but I may be mistaken).
• Media attachements are usually uploaded to Blossom servers now. Standard notes still only embed remote media, but the ecosystem has a semi decentralized means of hosting content, and most clients will have a more standard 'upload and share' type of feature that most other platforms/protocols have.
• The more recent outbox model (on supported clients) allows you to set the relays that will host your content and replies/reactions to your content, diversifying the ecosystem away from a handful of big relays. Software like Ditto also provides a more Mastodon community style experience - even to the extent of supporting the Mastodon API.

The identity management is a big one. I've had my ActivityPub account get nuked when Nerdica offline, and my current ActivityPub server (Trom) is sometimes slow and misses remote events. Having an identity I control means that I don't get my account nuked if something breaks, and I can participate within communities without being tied to their infrastrucure if the community is great while their infrastructure is not. It also works across different forms of servers - no needing accounts on Mastodon, Pixelfed, Writefreely, and Peertube in order to experience each form of social media on the network - on Nostr I can just use my same account across the network. It also makes me more tempted to host my own infrastructure, since if I get a case of the stupids, I can't accidentally nuke my account.

I also like the protocol's simplicity. It's pretty lightweight, and pretty easy to extend with some custom code. While custom extentions would break normal stuff (adding custom stuff to shortform posts is just going to make your stuff not work with other people's clients), creating something like a chess app or geocaching app is pretty easy. Even if said apps wouldn't work with your standard shortform or longform clients, they'd still interact with other apps using the same custom code, and be useable with a standard account.

And, while I seem to be a minority in this thread, I also like the moderation structure of Nostr. There's a few different ways to approach that:

• I use Nostr like RSS, I follow people I like and see their content - and I moderate it like I 'moderate' an RSS feed, i.e. choosing who I do and don't want to see.
• There are other ways to moderate though, for example, by pulling people you follow from the whole network while only setting your global feed (if your client supports a global feed) to pull from specific relays.
• Or you could use something like Ditto, which is a Nostr relay behind a Mastodon front end. Ditto gives users a local feed and global feed (though I beleive both can be enabled or disabled), with the content on the Ditto server being capable of moderating content in the exact same way any Activity Pub server can (including accessing content or controlling moderation via the Mastodon API).
• Last, if I was famous or had people trying to spam me, I could also set my inbox relay (place where people send their replies on outbox model supported clients) to a relay I control, then set rules/filters on who's allowed to reply and/or what content replies could contain.

Cool. Looks about right to me, not that I'm an expert. Bridgy Fed and Mostr do allow you to chain them together and do Nostr <> AT communication (though more recently there's also Eclipse.Pub that does Nostr <> AT). There are also a few other protocols still in use (Diaspora, DFRN, Zot, Nomad - Diaspora, Friendica, Hubzilla, Streams respectively) although all but Diaspora all internally bridge to Activity Pub so I'm not sure how they'd fit into your model.

I'm kind of the oppisite in that I prefer Nostr over ActivityPub, but both have their merits. As for technical ways Activity Pub has a leg up:

• Comunities - Activity Pub is built around individual instances, with people able to join communities focused on their interests and/or that have their preferred moderation policies. Some software exists to do similar things on Nostr, but that's not what most people use.
• Platforms - In a similar vein, Activity Pub is probably easier to make a platform out of, be it Meta making Threads or you making your own social media service for your friends. On Nostr people's accounts exist outside of the infrastructure they use, so it'd be hard to provide a more unified experience.
• Ease of Use - Activity Pub generally has a lower technical barrier to entry, you can sign up with an email and a password on most servers. Outside of (upcoming) DiVine or using Frost Bunkers, there's really no easy way to join Nostr without learning how to manage keys.
• Standardization - Acitivity Pub has existed for the better part of a decade, and the protocol hasn't changed much for a while. Nostr is not only newer, but breaks it's functionality into various NIPs (rules on how to interpret posts of specific types, e.g. shortform text, longform text, livestreams, etc) of which there's 100+ official ones (and plenty of unnofocial ones).

There's a couple different implementations that might be interesting to cover, depending on what you had in mind:

Friendica, Hubzilla, and Streams all support Activity Pub but focus more on a Facebook style social media instead of a standard microblogging platform.

Writefreely, Plume, Wordpress (via plugin), and Ghost (via plugin) all support activity pub and focus on long form content.

Peertube focuses on longform video, Loops on shortform video, and Funkwhale on audio based content.

There's also bridges from Activity Pub to AT (Bluesky) and Nostr as well.

Looks like a cross between Zot and Nostr. It looks like it's got some interesting features, namely the key based identities, easy migration, and it being designed around implementing custom features into the protocol while hopefully remaining compatible with other poly servers.

But I'm not really sure there'd be too much of a point in using it. Zot, Nostr, and AT (Bluesky) both already have the former two - with Nostr having the latter as well, and AT having a limited amount of the latter (Lexicons add flexibility but break compatibility). Although I only skimmed through the docs I can't see features big enough that would make someone implement polyproto over using an existing protocol that already has a userbase.

It might be handy as a server that is centered around polyproto, but compatible with other software (kind of like how Friendica isn't actually activity pub, but bridges things internally). That way you'd get the benefits of polyproto when talking with others on poly, while still being able to communicate with others on other protocols. But it doesn't look like they're aiming for that - I'm not a cryptography expert, but they're using X.509-based keys. Both Nostr and AT use secp256k1, so had they used those you'd be able to use the same identity across multiple platforms (even if the posts had to be bridged/translated since the json formatting would be different).

If you're looking for a central home server, private key powered accounts hidden behind a domain based username, the ability to instantly migrate servers, and a protocol that supported heavy customization, I'd recommend looking into ditto. It's built on Nostr, but it's built around being a more Activity Pub style home server (and it even works with Mastodon API capable clients). Ditto is nearly 1:1 with what it looks like polyproto wants to build, and it already exists right now on a protocol with an active userbase, so I'm not quite sure what the goal would be in making another protocol.

Or maybe I'm just being dumb and there's more to polyproto than I realize.

Like others have said, it's way more resource intensive than text based systems. Even discounting higher res vids, if you go to any random larger YT channel and download all their videos in 144p 480p and 720p it'll be quite a lot larger than you might expect. Sure, if you're serious about it you could get an array of hard drives and a small server, but you're talking hundreds of bucks and lots of upkeep. Outsource it to a VPS and AWS buckets and you've still got upkeep but now you've added an extra 0 to your bill.

There's not enough charitable nerds on the internet to host even a fraction of 1% of Youtube. It's even worse if self hosting instances is pushed. Even as a fellow tech nerd, no way I'm hosting my own instance just so I can share a video once in a blue moon. Something that always gets my goat in fediverse discourse is when people always jump to saying something along the lines of "just host your own" then wonder why AP went from ~2.5M users to 0.8M users.

There's also some Fediverse specific issues that hold back a more mainstream audience. There's some fringe political stuff on both sides of the isle which can pretty easily scare off people, and defederation combined with peertube's more siloed approach makes discovery near nil. (can't see content from remote peertube instances unless somebody has already subscribed to that channel on the remote instance from your local instance AFAIK).

Then there's the new platform (or in this case many platforms connected via one protocol) issues. Lack of users, limited/no monetization, limited development/support, and very few pros + a lot of cons at first glance from somebody who doesn't consider tech a hobby and is comparing it to established platforms.

Edit: Can't remember who, but iirc a peertube user I follow who regularly deletes their videos because their host doesn't give them too much space. It's great for a less big tech way to see their latest videos, but not acceptable if anyone's gonna bill something like that as the next big video platform.

While it's probably not exactly what you're looking for, I wanted to give vibe coding a try and wound up making a discord like client if you think it might be handy. It's not actually a chat server, it's just a client that uses a chat style layout to display posts under the mastodon api.

I've got an interest in the decentralized protocols and have written about them before, so I've got a bit of a disorganized treasure trove of articles, opinions, and blog posts I've gone through at some point. As a side note, shutout to the single file plugin for Gecko & Chromium based browsers, it's a great way to grab an archive of anything you might want to reference later.

I went through my list of archives plus a few things that came to mind that I've read/watched, below are things that (at least in part) take a more critical look at Activity Pub as a protocol or community.

Blog Posts & Articles:

• How Decentralized is Bluesky really? - A post by Christina Webber who goes over pitfalls of both AT and Activity Pub
• ActivityPub - one protocol to rule them all? and ActivityPub - Final thoughts, one year later. - two posts by Dennis Schubert, the Diaspora dev, on why Activity Pub was not integrated.
• Mastodon is fun and easy, except for when it isn't
• Mastodon is dead in the water
• Community is not enough - A post about funding issues
• Please Don’t Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here’s Why! - Mastodon starts DDoSing servers if your link goes viral
• Microblogging Protocols Compared v2 - My own post comparing the big three protocols. Be warned, it was supposed to be a smaller updated & corrected version of an older post, but it ballooned in size.
• Mastodon isn't decentralized and won't be the next big thing
• Something About The SWF Makes Me Feel Icky - The Social Web Foundation has taken on some big corporate donors and it's leader has a very protectionist/anti-other-protocols position.
• Fringe Mastodev - A collection of thoughts regarding what Mastodon developed into
• Nostr is Identity for the Internet - A post discussing the values of Nostr's identities (and decentralized identities in general) as beneficial over other alternatives (such as Activity Pub's server controlled identities)
• Scaling Mastodon is Impossible
• Twitter rival Mastodon rife with child-abuse material, study finds
• Linux Elitism...Again - Guy is nearly bullied off the fediverse for saying it should be tolerant of Windows users
• Op-ed: Why the great #TwitterMigration didn’t quite pan out

Lemmy Threads:

• What made everyone move to Bluesky or Threads instead of Mastodon?
• Why is Mastodon struggling to survive?
• Why are people preferring BlueSky over Mastodon?
• Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem
• Do you think the mostly limited range of political views is a strength or a weakness of Lemmy? - Post discussing Lemmy's echo chambery-ness
• Off-topic flamewar about US domestic politics - There were a bunch of low effort political bots discovered on Lemmy (key word: discovered; meaning high effort bots are probably flying under the radar). I was unable to find the original thread, it may have been nuked but most likely I just couldn't find it.

Vids, Social Media Posts, & Misc:

• Cristina Webber thinks Activity Pub as it is now may collapse
• Technology Connections left Mastodon - the comments are particularly not nice to Activity Pub
• Child Safety on Federated Social - A study on child abuse materials permeating the fediverse
• Chris Titus leaves Mastodon for BlueSky
• Activity Pub doesn't handle usernames or migrations well

There's a few technical and non technical reasons someone might be on Bluesky/AT instead of Activity Pub. Protocol specific there's:

) Account ownership (theoretically at least, migration is still in development). Though it's hidden behind domain based identification there's a cryptographic key that let's you migrate to another PDS even if yours is down or banned you.

) Performance. Hosting something like a PDS is lighter than an Activity Pub instance.

) User level configuration. Bluesky let's you set custom moderation lists and algorithms, something you can't on Activity Pub.

) Compatibility. Building something like a link aggregator on AT that is compatible with a microblogging platform like Bluesky is likely a lot easier then Activity Pub since AT is broken up into PDSs and Relays. (To be fair compatibility does work on Activity Pub, but it's got jank).

There's also some less technical reasons as well:

) Bluesky is a platform and you don't need to learn a protocol to use it. Yeah it's not that hard to learn how any of the big three protocols work, but it's also not that hard to change your car's oil or sew ripped cloths instead of replacing them - but how many people do those? I'd guess 80% of Lemmy is an IT guy between 20-45 so it can get a little echo chambery on how easy tech is. One if the reasons Threads makes up 99.5%+ of the fediverse.

) Defederatiation is becoming a mess. If some random Joe has a friend on Bluesky & Nostr (both bridged), a few on threads, and a few spread across different instances; yet he can't reach all but 1 or 2 of them from the instance he chose to join on joinmastodon it might be time to reconsider how things are done. Techy people might have no problem sifting through a long list of servers to find the right one, but somebody who's already on the fence is probably going to quit at that point.

) Bluesky has a more mainstream culture, while the fediverse has very specific thoughts and ideas. Had I said I was on Windows you all might have put a hit out on me 😆

Cool

I tested/wrote about it recently, you're welcome to copy my metaphorical homework if you want

Friendica Side

(I'm getting an Nginx error trying to load Nerdica, hopefully it'll be back up soon)

Lemmy Side

Cross Compatibility portion of blog post

The long in the short of it is that Lemmy can communicate with Mastodon & Friends, though since Activity Pub servers handle everything and microblogging platforms have no clue what Lemmy is doing there's a bit of jank.

You can post to a community by "@"ing it, although it can only be a text based submission. You can follow a community by following it's name (say @fediverse@lemmy.ml) and you'll get submissions in the form of boosts/reposts. You can also grab a link to a post or reply and search for that on a microblogging server to reply to or like.

My test went pretty well, although the post I made was slightly wonky (title and "@" appeared in the post text). I also didn't see all the Lemmy replies make it back to my home server. If nomadic identities make their way to activity pub most of the jank could be resolved.

As for a testimonial about compatibility something that sticks out is cross compatibility between Activity Pub, Nostr, and AT (BlueSky). I'm usually on Nostr, but I follow Activity Pub and AT accounts; and thanks to a copying of a json file you can search out the same username on Activity Pub or Nostr and find my Nostr account.

Hello me, testing replies