
Ask HN: The Fediverse looks promising. Do you agree? - rapnie
I really like how the fediverse is coming along, and is evolving. Started mostly by driven FOSS developers sharing a vision of a future decentralized internet, who created niche applications based on cool but incomplete standards, and who are now bundling forces to knit them together.<p>A lot of this development is a bit off the radar, because communications occur mostly on the fediverse itself, i.e. via dogfooding.<p>Unlike W3C (standards-first) standardization takes a practical-application-first approach, which is interesting.<p>Check e.g. https:&#x2F;&#x2F;socialhub.activitypub.rocks<p>Some cool apps to be discovered: Mastodon, Pleroma (Twitter alternative), PeerTube (YouTube alternative), PixelFed (Insta alternative), ForgeFed (federated git) and many others in development (Medium, Meetup alternatives, etc.)<p>Look here for a large list of AP projects: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git.feneas.org&#x2F;feneas&#x2F;fediverse&#x2F;-&#x2F;wikis&#x2F;watchlist-for-activitypub-apps<p>Seems to me the fediverse has a bright future. Do you agree?
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TheGrumpyBrit
I agree, but I do wonder if the developers ideology will make it
unsustainable.

I currently maintain two federated services -
[https://pixelfed.uk](https://pixelfed.uk), which hasn't yet grown beyond a
few people but costs next to nothing to host, and
[https://peertube.co.uk](https://peertube.co.uk), which has a bit of a
tendency for exponential growth. While it's not especially expensive right
now, I'll only be able to allow it to grow so far before hosting costs will
make it unsustainable.

I don't want to include any advertising, primarily because I don't want to
deviate from the standard PeerTube experience, but because the developers
provide no way for instance administrators to cover their hosting costs, the
size of any one instance is self limiting. That may be a good or a bad thing
depending on your position, but either way, I think the Fediverse will have
difficulty becoming mainstream while running an instance can only really be
viewed as a hobby rather than a potential income stream.

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ArtWomb
I very much agree ;) But I think a lot of hosting is still provided via
commodity cloud architecture. Whether its truly decentralized under stress
remains to be tested.

There was a flurry of articles in Summer 2018 about how FOSTA was encouraging
sex workers to use Switter and Bitcoin. I think they are probably still using
Twitter / Instagram / CashApp instead. In lieu of outside oppressive pressure,
most folks won't have a compelling reason other than ethics.

And therein lies the rub. These platforms need to get easier for regular
people to use. You could even imagine a broker service, where you just hit
submit on a piece of digital content, its data type is detected automatically,
and its stored on the appropriate service. You are returned a persistent URL
that can be embedded anywhere. And you earn revenue for content consumed and /
or compute resources provided. Like providing liquidity to an exchange.

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snisarenko
I think its too early to tell if it will be sustainable economically.

I believe it will be sustainable, due to cloud hosting costs going down every
year. If the trend continues federation/self-hosting might become the default
way to operate software services (even non-social stuff). However, another
trend that needs to continue is automation of monitoring and security updates.

In the meantime, if you want to take the fediverse for a spin. I am working on
a few aggregator projects to help you explore the fediverse with minimal
friction.

[https://mastodonia.club](https://mastodonia.club)

[https://pixelfed.club](https://pixelfed.club)

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rapnie
Clickable links:

\- ActivityPub Rocks discussion forum:
[https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks](https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks)

\- Watchlist for ActivityPub apps:
[https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-
fo...](https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-
activitypub-apps)

