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Comment by cxr | Hacker News Reader

The solution to the problem of centralization that Bluesky has been touted as tackling (and that Mastodon doesn't deal with in a satisfactory way) doesn't look anything like Bluesky or Twitter or Mastodon. Instead, it's just making RSS (read: Atom) suck less.

Crazy that no one in the relevant circles seems to have realized that microblog posts don't require anything more sophisticated than what a static site generator can produce. The heavyweight server-to-server protocols that we've seen are just way too heavy.

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This is how I've been feeling but I'm assuming there's more to this that I just don't know.

I keep thinking, what if we: 1. Use domains/subdomains as usernames by just... having the content on them.

2. Follow a truly basic structure for index (feed), single post, etc. so that clients know how to consume them easily.

3. For interactions (replies, likes, etc), the client posts them to your own server (or service hosting you) and they're available at a url referencing the original post url on their own domain. ex) mydomain.com/replies/thepostsurl/1

4. It then posts the reply url to the original posts server endpoint, which can accept or not.

5. When a user loads the post, it lists the replies and interactions as a list of links. the client goes and gets their content directly, and renders it.

This would work without any servers actually having to talk to each other or store more than a link for interactions. If you want to confirm the interaction url on receiving a submission, your server could check but it doesn't need to store or cache it.

Am I crazy or would this not work just fine? or, is this what activity pub already is?

I like this a lot. It also addresses (maybe even solves?) the moderation issue, which is the harriest problem to solve when content is centralized.

That's still too heavyweight. You have just described something that is more complex than what a static site generator can produce. My static site doesn't have an "endpoint" for people to post notifications to.

A like is nothing more than a way of saying, "I like this". Think. You can come up with a way to do this that doesn't require you to abandon RSS (read: Atom).

If Alice posts something and Bob likes it, then he can say so—from his perspective, he clicks "Like", and in turn this just ends up as another entry in his own feed. He doesn't need write permission to anything on Alice's server, and Alice doesn't need a smart (social protocol-aware) daemon sitting on the line listening. If Alice is subscribed to Bob's feed, then she's already lined up to get it. If she's not subscribed to Bob's feed (and maybe even doesn't know he exists) but is so neurotic/insecure that she craves validation from strangers on the Internet after years of conditioning on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and HN, then she can subscribe to Marge's feed. Marge is Alice's friend. Marge casts a wide net (follows a lot of people) and keeps an eye out for anyone saying they liked Alice's shitposts. When she notices, she lets Alice know: Marge squirts an entry into her own feed saying, "hey, Alice, look over here at Bob saying he liked your shitty Beetlejuice tribute" (which is pretty much exactly the mechanism behind boosts/retweets—except these would be boosts/retweets not of content but of what is known at least in the XMPP vernacular as "presence" information). Also, Marge is actually Facebook/Google/whoever, once they realize how lucrative it is to have this kind of influence and mandate in the next generation of social media.

Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30862612>

You are basically describing Nostr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssNkOMx2E5Y

I've looked at Nostr before, and I'm confused by how this response came to exist.

I'm describing RSS (read: Atom) with better UX. Nostr is a from-whole-cloth new protocol that's fundamentally incompatible with everything I've laid out.

(The video you linked to is unwatchably obnoxious, by the way.)

The biggest hurdle is the vast VAST majority of people do NOT want to host or run anything, which means there is varying levels of centralization, which introduces the issues people have had.

No it doesn't. The architecture of the platform (like the crummy one that undergirds Mastodon) is what leads to that. Again: microblogs don't need to be any more complicated than a static site.

If you have the latest issue of Creed Thoughts in your word processor, then it's easier than ever to get a URL for it. Choose ".html" when you hit "Save As..." rather than ".docx", and then sign up for one of the unending supply free static file hosts.

This is already way past the "average" user; for millions even the configurability of MySpace was a bridge too far.

There is an argument that people who can't be bothered to figure it out probably have nothing interesting to say, and that may be true in the vast majority of cases, it's not universally true; I'm sure we can find quite interesting social media accounts posted by someone who doesn't have the inclination or time to figure out "free static file hosts".

That's what Nostr is designed to fix: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr

My thinking is that it would be a bit like email: run your own server if you want, and the other 99% can use any of the zillion hosting services that exist or would crop up to do it for you with the ease of Gmail.

Even as a dev, I am not going to take care of 3 and 4. I just host my site via a static generator on GitHub.

Who's going to do it for normal users? That's what bluesky is doing and anyone who's interested can theoretically host their own servers.

> Use domains/subdomains as usernames by just...

Username should be owned. Domains are leased.

True, but from what I've seen the usernames on every social solution, decentralized or not, are essentially leased too aren't they? Either they're based around a domain you control or they're under someone else's control ultimately.

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