wordpress-activitypub VS PixelFed

On a semi related note, WordPress recently acquired an activitypub plugin that does exactly what it sounds like. [0]

So as a corporation you don't really need a mastodon instance to broadcast your stuff. I think most organisations will go this route. (and i suspect threads hopes to piggyback of this for content).

[0] https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

There is an ActivityPub Plugin for Wordpress; I believe the author has recently been hired by Auttomatic.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

The Indieweb Crew of course did this first. The principle POSSE – Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere – was coined by them and is the guiding principle behind the Indieweb movement and it is exactly what you’re trying to do. You should click around a little bit in their wiki:

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Most of the time the Indieweblings are doing their own “protocol“ by receiving and reacting to webmentions with rich data structures in Microformats syntax in their HTML. Some parts of Indieweb a rather opinionated about technologies. But a lot of them also interact with different federation services, for example see:

https://indieweb.org/ActivityPub

Finally there's an ActivityPub Plugin for Wordpress, so you might want to check that out.

Mastodon uses the ActivityPub protocol, which is implemented by /r/Pixelfed, /r/Peertube, Calckey, WordPress, and more.

Its a bittersweet feeling. Blogging was an information dissemination revolution that was made possible by the web. Giving individuals unprecedented ability to self-publish on any niche subject and reaching remote audiences anywhere in the world (the famous long-tail).

The revolution was suppressed. While easy enough to setup by writers (especially if not self-hosted) and accessed by readers, the combination of bookmarks, rss, blog comments and web based search and discovery was ultimately overtaken by the "super-easy" setups offered by the social media walled gardens (social graphs, follows, viral "likes", algorithmic timelines and a race to the short-form bottom).

But not all is lost. The extreme commercialization, privacy concerns and algorithmic oppression of social media has all but ruined it as a platform. People have been thinking and working on somehow reinstating the original promise of the web as a decentralized platform for self-publishing. While not quite yet mainstream, projects such as the Wordpress activitypub plugin [1] suggest we could dream of a new blogosphere blooming.

Here's to the next 20 years!

[1] https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

Currently contributing to Pixelfed project to gain experience: https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/pulls?q=is%3Aclosed+is%...

There's https://pixelfed.org/

I do post many pictures, but I am tempted to self-host Pixelfed as well as an Instagram alternative.

Is something like Pixelfed an option?

https://pixelfed.org

I'm not affiliated with the project, neither I consider it a panacea, but anyone who might be interested, here it is: https://pixelfed.org/ It's best to use the web browser with it, although there's an Android app for it (PixelDroid), and there is an official app for iOS and Android currently in beta.

You can suggest features on the project github https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues

Contrary to initial expectations, Threads falls short in terms of embracing decentralization. Notably, the platform does not support the widely adopted ActivityPub protocol, which is essential for interoperability with other decentralized networks in the Fediverse. This absence prevents seamless interaction between Threads and existing platforms that adhere to decentralized principles, such as Mastodon and Pixelfed.

Fediverse, or 'federated universe' is the name given to the social media platforms that utilize this concept of federation and decentralization. While Lemmy and Mastodon are the most popular right now, there are many similar platforms. There is Peertube for example, which is a Youtube alternative, or Pixelfed, which is an instagram alternative. You can view a list of all such platforms on this site. Here's also a visual representation that might help.

Pixelfed(like instagram) https://pixelfed.org/