Hey 👋 if you don't know us already, we're building Frontpage; an AT Procol based federated link aggregator. We shipped an initial MVP in closed beta recently and have since been thinking about the road to general availability.

This post is an RFC (Request for Comments) targeted at technically minded folks who are interested in seeing the progression of atproto for non-Bluesky/microblogging use cases. All that's to say the language that follows assumes some knowledge about how Bluesky and atproto work! I've tried to include links to explain what all of the jargon means though, so hopefully it's not entirely nonsense for folks a little less familiar!

When you post on Frontpage, we propose that a mirror post will also be created in your Bluesky account. When you comment on Frontpage, we propose that a mirror reply will be created in your Bluesky account.

Conversely, when you reply to one of these mirrored posts in Bluesky - we will show it as a reply in Frontpage.

Additionally, Bluesky likes will be translated to Frontpage votes and vice versa.

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[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Unpopular opinion: IDK why people want perfect interop so much, I have a Mastodon account and a Lemmy account, big deal. We've got bigger fish to fry than this. The formats are different enough that you're better off having separate accounts for microblogging and threadiverse.

Interop for similar platforms is a great feature, but for dissimilar platforms I don't think it's actually necessary just a novelty. Also I think people try to push this on new users as some big, useful, important feature, but I think it only confuses the new users.

Also I noticed most of the time when people complain about ActivityPub interop issues, it almost always ends up being Mastodon's fault lol. Probably because they were early to the party and didn't have to worry about interop and standards much back then. At least I hope it isn't malicious lol.

[–] mark@programming.dev 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Don't think this opinion is unpopular at all. It makes sense for platforms that are similar to interop.

Hypothetically like Youtube interop with Peertube (video platforms) or Instagram interop with Pixelfed (photos). Or Threads, Reddit and Lemmy (forums). And Mastodon and Twitter (sorry, but just making a point here 😁)

But yeah, see no reason for interop between platforms with completely different purposes.

[–] m4t@h4.io 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

@mark @Die4Ever example: im a mastodon user and I follow this topic bc i find it interesting

and i would never create a lemmy account to see your comments, i like having every post (from mastodon, lemmy, peertube, threads, pixelfed) in one single place

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i like having every post (from mastodon, lemmy, peertube, threads, pixelfed) in one single place

Have you tried http://fedia.io/ ? It has both Mastodon and Lemmy included in one place

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 1 points 1 month ago

I think in some ways Mastodon is better suited - if you use the list feature actively there, it gets quite powerful. And personally I quite like the way content gets community curated on Mastodon once you follow enough people.

I love Mbin, but scratches a very different itch. :)

[–] mark@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

That sort of aggregating would make more sense in an RSS reader. RSS feeds are exactly for that purpose.

But a platform trying to interop from an infinite number of unrelated platforms just seems odd.

[–] m4t@h4.io 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@mark you can't reply, share or even like a post with a rss reader, I believe one of actititypub goals is to replace rss

personally, I follow an important amount of users and then class them into mastodon lists (tech, politics, movies, news...)

[–] mark@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

You can reply and interact on platforms from an RSS reader. All an RSS feed is is a list of links. When you click them, you go directly to the platform. When using on a mobile device, RSS readers will even open the app for you to reply or interact with posts.

The fediverse will never replace RSS feeds. They serve a totally different purpose.

[–] m4t@h4.io 2 points 1 month ago

@mark why do u want me to use the rss feed instead of my following list ? whats the difference between them for u?

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

yea idk, it's maybe like a fun bonus sometimes, but it's kinda like trying to put the square peg into the circle hole (where it doesn't fit, unlike the famous meme video lol)