I think we need to see more implementations of the already existing federated protocols. We need that one app that will truly explode and bring the fediverse to the masses. Mastodon is okay but it's just a microblogging platform; it's not really too innovative.
If the future popularity of the fediverse depends on a killer app instead of the various benefits of federation then it's doomed. As soon as such a killer app appears, a non-federated competitor could copy the idea and out-compete the fediverse version because it is not hamstrung by having to stick to the (inherently slow-moving) fediverse standards.
A similar thing happened to IRC, which _still_ lacks heavily used features that other chat apps like discord and slack have had for years and years. Simlarly, end-to-end encryption for emails is unlikely to ever become a thing despite the privacy advantages.
IRC isn't and never was federated. It is a centralized chat protocol where you connect to isolated networks.
Similarly Matrix is making massively huge gains in the chat space and is federated. It's not taking over slack or discord yet, but is gaining features and ground.
I would agree, but encryption (let alone end-to-end) is totally absent from specs like https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/. The word isn't even mentioned once.
I don't just want federation, I want to know that my/friend/family's information (or at least private messages) is private because I know they won't "self host".
Maybe the solution, instead, is to create a simple browser plugin that accepts ciphertext and keys and decrypts blobs of text. It's ugly, but you could render it in place with some creative tagging of the blobs.
1. define a schema for the blob. recipient pubkey, signature, hash, etc
2. define a delineator or symbol of some sort to encapsulate the serialized blob so our plugin recognizes it
3. parse blob into readable text for the user
4. provide interface to manage/create keys/messages and load the blob to the clipboard for users to paste into whatever.
voila. please hold your applause, I'm going to need one of you to MVP this by the end of the week.
Let's do it. I have similar ideas and we can use blockchain to anchor some stuff there so that the extension doesn't need any servers to get data, only Blockchain node to connect to
I feel like Mastodon's standout feature is also its biggest drawback when it comes to adoption. The vast majority of end-users don't understand or care to understand the need for different instances or which fediverse they should join, nor do they have interest in setting up their own.
> Mastodon is okay but it's just a microblogging platform
Why would we a social network to be anything other than a microblogging platform? In case it lacks some conveniences you would like it to have, why not just add them as optional features?
