this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Why can't we have a unified API across the fediverse to use in mobile apps? (kbin.social)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by adonis@kbin.social to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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Is there a reason why all the services, that use the ActivityPub protocol don't have a unified API?

None of the mastodon apps allow me to log in with a lemmy/kbin account.

Also none of the lemmy apps allow me to log in with a kbin account.

Even though kbin has both mastodon (microblogging) and lemmy (threads, communities) functionality.

Also, Pixelfed recently introduced "login with Mastodon", but all it really does is just create a new user on it's instance and copy over the mastodon followers and profile info.

Why can't we just have one account to rule them all?

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[–] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

With extensive work, these tools can all be made to work together under a single username. Every tool needs to be made aware of every other tool, and a lot of the actual federation code needs to be externalised to an all-encompassing server. This can be done without breaking any spec and without becoming incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse, but it’ll require a LOT of work.

You basically summarized my original plan for communick. The basic idea is:

  1. Take the existing services, provide commercial hosting
  2. Use the revenue to fund development of protocol-level integrations, contribute back to open source
  3. Build tools to make it easy for companies to migrate away from Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/WhatsApp and own back their internet presence again
  4. ???
  5. Profit / Destroy Big Tech.

Unfortunately, the amount of people willing to pay for commercial providers of social media is embarrassingly small, so I am stuck at step 1 and the best I could do is to build a SSO system for Matrix/Mastodon/XMPP, to let people use the same credentials on all "communick.com" servers.

[–] skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

imagine tech brand like LTT coming in with a federated forum for customer/community interaction

Exactly! This also applies for old media as well. Why is it that the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Deutsche Welle, Globo, Telemundo, Forbes et caterva haven't still set up their own AP servers? I guess they seem as more interesting to go to Twitter and bitch about Elon Musk instead of just emptying the platform? Why can't they become providers of a service and say "all subscribers get a free account"?

[–] skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] rglullis@communick.news 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the entire Fediverse is equal to what, two percent of Twitter’s userbase?

I'd honestly say it's even less and I'd even wager that the amount of bots here are even higher (percent-wise) than Twitter. I'm working on a search engine for the fediverse now, and I was surprised with the amount of bot accounts and mirror servers that I am finding.

you don’t want a journalist’s socials to be in the hands of their boss.

I feel quite the opposite. If a journalist is really independent, then they can go on to host their own content. But as long as they are writing under the editorial guidelines of some larger institution, I want this association to be well defined and transparent.

People don’t want Twitter do die and wither away.

I am fundamentally opposed to any ad-funded business. I honestly believe that moment a lot of the issues in our society can be traced back to the moment that we made it possible for people to make a living by just collecting eyeballs instead of focusing on quality work at a small scale. So, yeah, I very much want Twitter/Facebook/Google to die and wither away.