Self-introduction; ocaps in relation to social networks / virtual worlds

#1

Hello! I suppose I should do a self-introduction. My name is Christopher Lemmer Webber; I worked on ActivityPub, which powers the current distributed social web (Mastodon, Pleroma, PeerTube, etc).

My main interests and goals these days are about transitioning to richer distributed social networks, mainly into the “virtual worlds” space. You can hear more about that in my APConf talk.

Anyway, I’m trying to get more into SwingSet, Jessie, etc, so just figured I’d give a self-introduction.

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#2

Welcome!

Got very intrigued looking over ActivityPub and finally had a chance to look closer today. I have a very particular topic of interest that I hope to get into at some point in the future.

More generally, while working in that space, has there been progress towards capturing/relying accessibility related details between actors. I’m curious about insights that may have not formalized enough to make it into the specs… etc.

Aside — A lot of folks attend the SES/Frozen Realms meetings taking place Thursdays 4-6pm ET which are more oriented towards underlying spec matters.

#3

Hi @saleh!

Probably a direction not specified in the ActivityPub spec that both of us would love to see it go: OcapPub writeup

#4

Wow… sorry for not seeing this sooner, and thanks for sharing that link.

I guess mine pales in comparison… But it is about Looking for the CX! and for now I think it helps to skip the parts that are clearly too raw (literally and metaphorically I guess).

I have no clue what that looks like yet, but I know what not that feels like (and I know that I a personally have it easier than most) — Part of the problem of course is that accessibility is being shoved onto “consumers” who made the cut of some “user research” (sadly even dog food has better sampling… etc.).

I think it fair to state, it takes me some time to thoroughly digest the work you shared but I really hope we can find overlap in our passions here :slight_smile:

#5

As I read along (ie things absolutely dig):

  • freedom to filter, Unwanted messages, from spam to harassment
    • pro: someone like myself can actually get notified when they are assumed to have been.
    • con: risk of inadvertently over excluding (ie systematic failure of underlying intent).

  • love this: contemporary social networks are run by surveillance capitalist
    organizations

    • pro: we’re safe (those of us who are desired/useful at least)
    • con: we are marshaled by narcissistic ignorant fools (being polite)

  • business model based on destroying privacy can lead to undesirable outcomes

    • pro: there are no secrets
    • con: except for those who run the show (and those they like, there are a few shows/books that told us all that).

  • breadth vs. depth

    • want to come back to this, it’s important
  • “wrong assumptions…” I relate to the thought very deeply :slight_smile:
  • “claim we can prevent what we can not” I’d say we also prevent what is not even there more often than what would could have actually prevented, just search catch (not literally though that sucked) on github :wink:.

Areas for deeper questions/thoughts (ie reflection/discussion):

  • contextual relevance
    • author (language, persona… etc.)
    • chronological vs. sequential (ie it is new/old versus pending/next/outdated)
  • compositional/presentational (I prefer “contentual” but that does not exist)
    • semantic markup
    • translation/transformation vs multiplexing (ie here presenting the ideal of one or more provided alternatives and not synthetic ones)