Seems unlikely that we’ll end up with a single unified social web platform. I like Mastodon’s focus on communities. I like Bluesky’s thinking on distributed moderation. I like the IndieWeb’s principles of ownership. I like Nostr’s private messaging. How will we tie all of this together? Blogs.

@birming Nope, don't think I ever got access. I'm also very pessimistic about anything that isn't built on some kind of open protocol.

@manton Though maybe it won't all be tied together, and maybe that's okay. (For instance, the point of private messaging is not to be linked to anything else.) Interoperability isn't always a good thing, IMO: it's okay especially for smaller platforms to have distinct identities that don't get overwhelmed by or absorbed into the bigger platforms.

@manton

we don't always end up tying things together.

napster was a similar situation. all the music was in one place, until they were sued out of existence and it never came together again.

sometimes do come together, like the city of new orleans. i went down immediatley after katrina to see the city decimated. but it seems it's mostly back by now, but it's taken almost 20 years.

there was a reason for it to come back together, it had an identity. not sure social media ever got there.

@manton I think we must not end up into anything "single". We must keep things separated but interoperable at a minimum level as well as promote content ownership.

@manton If the past were futrue:

There will be a period where clients, or an intermediate service, will try to merge the different federated services in to one experience. (The same idea behind Adium)

This of course is makes a confusing and disjointed experience. I would hope to have something to make identity across services more seamless.

[PossumID](https://whosum.com/prove) is an interesting idea.

@manton If something like this was seemlessly integrated in the services that allow us to follow the feeds of a person from ServiceA & ServiceB while DMing on ServiceC.

I'd love to be able to use something like Signal for private messaging, Mastodon/BlueSky/Nostr as different twitter like communities and something(s) else for semi-private groups. (Friends and family encrypted messaging)

But for this to work a single identity protocol needs to emerge and start winning everyone over…

@manton The web is tied by the “browser standards” not by any particular “category” (This is still an ongoing struggle, when one browser unilaterally changes something).
No one has really paid attention so far to the social web and we’ve let it be reigned by narrow interests.
It is an interesting time, let's not ruin it with our own greed and let's focus instead on giving everyone reasons to implement those standards.

@manton And reader apps!!

@manton I suppose the main hurdle in all of this is creating original content. Only a small percentage of the population is able and motivated enough to do this. Good tools are a start, but it isn't enough. Nurturing content creation should get more attention than it gets.

@renevanbelzen @manton I agree, though I believe the likes of Twitter and similar platforms dampened the amount of original content that might otherwise exist. The very nature of Twitter was all about quick updates, later replaced with hot takes, clickbait, vitriol, and political commentary or attacks. It makes posting so quick and easy, yes, but the end result is content that caters to that philosophy.

@davew @manton

So _ONE_ decentralized, like email' 📨, protocol called #ActivityPub 🍻, to rule them all, 💯,, private 😆, like 📨! /S 😆

Good lord iWonder iF#PGP.JS could get added into the #fediverse? 📨💯😆🧐

@manton @tchambers
I think the good thing about BluesSky is that people who want to act in broadcast mode reducing human interactions to one-way transactions, and those who relish the accumulation of human beings as a reservoir of attention or as cattle, and those who would love to follow their makeshift leaders can find a home for themselves in #Bluesky and leave us tf alone with their marketing mogul aspirations.

@manton

Some of the software that now runs ActivityPub used to run other protocols.

Maybe in the future, some of the decentralized social-media networking software will switch protocol.

And one protocol will become more dominant.