People too often talk about “The Fediverse version of X”, or “Add ActivityPub to X” without actually talking about the point of it, or what the functionality would be. It’s discussed like a badge that says “I did Fediverse to it”. I wish people discussed this kind of thing from the feature level first. What is it you want to do? What would federation offer you? Does that even make sense for that product? Just saying “Fediverse version of the Chase credit card app” sounds great, but what would that even mean? Is that something people need, or do you just want more “Fediverse stuff”?
I often get requests for random Federated ideas with Owncast that sound cool, but don’t truly solve a problem people have. Identify a problem, come up with useful functionality, work backwards from there.
I often get requests for random Federated ideas with Owncast that sound cool, but don’t truly solve a problem people have. Identify a problem, come up with useful functionality, work backwards from there.
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I think this is in part because the success of the fediverse is unique; its kinda the only post-web-2.0, genuinely community-owned platform that exists and has mainstream-ish mindshare.
So that success excites a lot of people, everyone wants their idea to succeed in the same way. So I think when they say "fediverse" in this context, they aren't actually talking about the fediverse itself as much as they are trying to reference its success and promise.
"Fediverse" just rolls off the tongue a lot easier than "self hosted platform that allows 1 admin to easily onboard 100 users, then form a resilient and genuinely useful global network with other servers while retaining autonomy on their own server"
@forestjohnson Yup, I completely agree.
