280 lines
No EOL
7.8 KiB
Markdown
280 lines
No EOL
7.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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marp: true
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paginate: true
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_class: invert
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---
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# <!-- fit --> Into the federated Universe
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### Digital sovereignty through decentral communication
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<!---->
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###### by April John ([@april:blahaj.nyc][matrix])
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<!-- _footer: "*Photo by Tobias Buckdahn, CC BY-SA via https://gitlab.com/swisode/website/blob/primary/themes/quark-child/images/fediverse.svg*" -->
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[matrix]: https://github.com/marp-team
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---
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# Content notes
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- Technical details of the activitypup protocoll
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- The politics behind different fediverse servers
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- Inter-project politics
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- Unused potential of the Fediverse
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- Does it need to be federated?
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- Why dont we do peer to peer?
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---
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April John
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===
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@april@donotsta.re
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@april:blahaj.nyc
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##### Things im known for:
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- Fediverse Software Maintainer
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- Linux Kernel Contributor
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- Professional pro-grammar kitten
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---
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# The Fediverse (federated universe)
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<!-- _footer: "*Photo by [Eukombos](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eukombos), CC0 via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fediverse_logo_proposal.svg)*" -->
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- users on different servers communicate via a shared protocol
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-
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---
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# The idea of a federated universe.
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- Founding of twitter in 2006 as microblogging service
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- Open Standard OStatus 2008
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- Making of gnu-social 2013
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- ActivityPup in 2018
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- finally, a federated universe! The fediverse!
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---
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# You heard of Mastodon?
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---
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# You heard of Mastodon?
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...there is more.
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---
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<!-- _footer: "*Photo by axbom.com, CC BY-SA via https://axbom.com/fediverse/*" -->
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---
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# Activitypub
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- protocol introduced in 2018
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- idea of a universal standard for any multimedia service to communicate between servers
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- i.e. servers chaos.social and crimew.gay communicating with each other
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- especially popular for microblogging
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---
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# The architecture of Activitypub
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<!-- _footer: "*Photo by fastly.com*" -->
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---
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# Actors and Activities
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### Actors represent People, Video Channels, Podcasts
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### Activities represent Posts, Videos, Audio
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---
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# Actors and Activities
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### Actors represent People, Video Channels, Podcasts
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```
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{
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"@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
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"type": "Person",
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"id": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna",
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"name": "luna 'delete & redraft' vivian.",
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"preferredUsername": "luna",
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"summary": "hi, i'm luna, your local 18 year old gay ace polyam non-binary transfem genderfluid mess.",
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"inbox": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/inbox/",
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"outbox": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/outbox/",
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"followers": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/followers/",
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"following": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/following/",
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"liked": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/liked/"
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}
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```
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---
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# Actors and Activities
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### Activities represent Posts, Videos, Audio
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```
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{
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"@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
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"type": "Note",
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"to": ["https://donotsta.re/users/april"],
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"attributedTo": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna",
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"content": "it's 4:20, <b>nice</b>"
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}
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```
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---
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# Issues of the standard
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- barebones specification leading to many unstandartized extensions of the protocol
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- happened, because as a w3c standard it had to satisfy many people, and thus less was more
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- activitypub sends HTML with Activities, which the Servers need to parse and then server to users
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- XSS as a service!
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- Limited standard featureset, but we can extend it ourself!
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---
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# How?
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### "Simple", we add extra JSON fields!
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---
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# Extending the AP protocol
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- Projects want new features
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- They need to invent the standard to federate these themself
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---
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# Case study: Cat ears on a profile
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- Misskey added support for cat ears on profile pictures: 
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- federated using a ActivityPub extension called ``isCat``
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- Misskey interprets it and displays cat ears
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- others like Mastodon just ignore it
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---
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# Case study: Cat ears on a profile
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```
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{
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"@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
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"type": "Person",
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"id": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna",
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"name": "luna 'delete & redraft' vivian.",
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"preferredUsername": "luna",
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"summary": "hi, i'm luna, your local 18 year old gay ace polyam non-binary transfem genderfluid mess.",
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"inbox": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/inbox/",
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"outbox": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/outbox/",
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"followers": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/followers/",
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"following": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/following/",
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"liked": "https://crimew.gay/users/luna/liked/",
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"isCat": true
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}
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```
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---
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# ..that doesnt always work
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---
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# Multiple standards for the same feature
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## Quote posts
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- ``_misskey_quote``
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- ``quoteUrl``
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- ``quoteUri``
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---
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# Multiple standards for the same feature
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## Groups exclusive posts
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- Bonfire's circles
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- Lemmy's implementation using ``Announce`` and ``Follow``
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- Friendica & Hubzilla implementing groups using ActivityStreams
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- Smithereen using FEP-400e (Fediverse Enhancement Proposals)
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- ....
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---
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# Mastodon in the meantime
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- implementing FEP-400e partially
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- adding many own ActivityPub extensions to the mix which werent used in any of the above mentioned projects
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- we now have an even different standard
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---
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# Mastodon messing up things
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### The issue with that
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- Mastodon is by far the biggest fediverse project
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- When mastodon implements something a specific way it turns the de-facto standard
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- bad standards impact the fediverse as a whole
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---
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# Mastodon messing things up
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### Things already messed up
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- LD-signing
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- bad sanity checking of AP ids
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- Mastodon storing activities using internal IDs instead of using the provided IDs
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- no single implementation of the AP C2S api (yes that exists), they rather use their own
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- goal is to preserve a "Mastodon User Experience" by not implementing it
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- and soon... Groups
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---
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# Why things are like this
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- every project working on its own
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- no real unified effort between fediverse software maintainers to unify features
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- working together was tried before, but suffered from disagreement between different software projects
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- every software maintainer playing "mini dictator"
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- Mastodon having a monopoly, caused my 90% of people being on the 10 most populated instances (which run on mastodon exclusively)
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---
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# How things could get better
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- Fediverse Enhancement Proposals
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- standardize activitypub examples using w3c
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- AP C2S
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- people moving from big instances to small ones
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- selfhost it!
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---
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# Activitypub Client to Server
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- part of the original AP spec
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- never got implemented fully anywhere
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- some clients existed for it
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- Pleroma started implementation of it, Mastodon refused to do it for 5 years in a row
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- essentially universal API for all activitypub servers, using the same standards as between server communication
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- makes it able to use one client for all* AP servers
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<!-- _footer: all that implement it -->
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- takes much load of the server
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---
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# Selfhost it!
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- big instances work against decentralisation of the fediverse
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- reason Mastodon got the biggest fedi software in the first place
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- own instances gives you independance
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- lets you deal with fediblocks yourself
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---
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# Issues with self hosting
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- money
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- one needs to administer the instance themself
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- your server hardware may be overwhelmed
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- fedi consumes much storage
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---
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# How to selfhost
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- get suitable hardware & domain
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- What instance do you want?
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- How do you want to deploy it?
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- Do you want to use a S3 bucket?
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- Follow relays!
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---
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# What can the future hold?
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### Universal Peer-to-peer
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### More smaller instances
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---
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# Ending words
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## Distrust authorities - promote decentralisation |