I’m very optimistic about the rise of federation and ActivityPub in particular. The main problem with web 1.0 was discoverability, and that’s precisely the problem addressed by federation using a common protocol. Other important factors are availability of cheap VPS hosting solutions and containerization. Running your own server today is much cheaper and easier than it was even a few years ago.
All the tools are there to start rebuilding open web and I think we’re seeing that starting to happen now with stuff like Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and Lemmy. It might be a tiny percentage of the overall web right now, but I’m going to argue that it’s the absolute size that matters here. Open platforms only need to attract enough users to be self sustaining. As long as there are enough people willing to develop them, fund hosting, and create content, then these platforms can exist indefinitely without the need for rapid growth.
I’m very optimistic about the rise of federation and ActivityPub in particular. The main problem with web 1.0 was discoverability, and that’s precisely the problem addressed by federation using a common protocol. Other important factors are availability of cheap VPS hosting solutions and containerization. Running your own server today is much cheaper and easier than it was even a few years ago.
All the tools are there to start rebuilding open web and I think we’re seeing that starting to happen now with stuff like Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and Lemmy. It might be a tiny percentage of the overall web right now, but I’m going to argue that it’s the absolute size that matters here. Open platforms only need to attract enough users to be self sustaining. As long as there are enough people willing to develop them, fund hosting, and create content, then these platforms can exist indefinitely without the need for rapid growth.