On 2008-05-18 15:49:33, the father of the #Fediverse and creator of #ActivityPub, Evan Prodromou, sent the first ever message in what was later called the “Fediverse” social network (not Mastodon® social network).

  • The first software was called Laconica.
  • The first instance was Identica.
  • The first prototol was OpenMicroBlogging.
  • The first label/name was Identiverse social network.

Here is the archived post: This is my first post.

The network never went down. From the first protocol, OpenMicroBlogging, it switched to the protocol OStatus (also by Evan), then to ActivityPub as most know it today. It’s exactly the same social network since 2008!

Happy 17th Year Anniversary Fediverse network!

#FediverseDay #FediverseMonth #MayIsFediverseMonth

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    4 hours ago

    The network never went down.

    You say that but, everything I ever posted on identica (and also on Evan’s later OStatus site Status.Net, which i was a paying customer of) went 404 just a few years later. 😢

    When StatusNet shut down I was offered a MySQL dump, which is better than nothing for personal archival but not actually useful for setting up a new instance due to OStatus having DNS-based identity and lacking any concept for migrating to a new domain.

    https://identi.ca/evan/note/6EZ4Jzp5RQaUsx5QzJtL4A notes that Evan’s own first post is “still visible on Identi.ca today, although the URL format changed a few years ago, and the redirect plugin stopped working a few years after that.” … but for whatever reason he decided that most accounts (those inactive over a year, iiuc, which I was because I had moved to using StatusNet instead of identica) weren’t worthy of migrating to his new pump.io architecture at all.

    Here is some reporting about it from 2013: https://lwn.net/Articles/544347/

    As an added bonus, to the extent that I can find some of my posts on archive.org, links in them were all automatically replaced (it was the style at the time) with redirects via Evan’s URL shortening service ur1.ca which is also now long-dead.

    screenshot of Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in the 1982 film Blade Runner, during his "Tears in rain" monologue. (no text)

    imo the deletion of most of the content in the proto-fediverse (PubSubHubbubiverse? 😂) was an enormous loss; I and many other people had years of great discussions on these sites which I wish we could revisit today.

    🪦

    The fact that ActivityPub now is still a thing where people must (be a sysadmin or) pick someone else’s domain to marry their online identity to is even more sad. ActivityPub desperately needs to become content addressable and decouple identity from other responsibilities. This experiment (which i learned of via this post) from six years ago seemed like a huge step in the right direction, but I don’t know if anyone is really working on solving these problems currently. 😢

    • Yohan Yukiya Sese Cuneta 사요한@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      5 hours ago

      Good thing I checked via piefed.social, your comment isn’t showing in fedia.io.

      Anyway …

      “The network never went down” because plenty of instances were already around. One such, during the OpenMicroBlogging and OStatus protocol days was “The TWiT Army Canteen” (aside: it was the first non-flagship instance that grew big and fast).

      Instances (flagship or otherwise) going offline is not the same as the network shutting down. As long as there are instances federating, the network is online. Even during the protocol transition periods, everyone implemented dual protocols. Once everyone transitioned to the new protocol, it was only then software devs removed the old protocol. So, still the same network since 2008.

      For example, I and many others were running our own Friendika/Friendica instances when Identica was migrated to PumpIO, and StatusNet’s paid hosted service was discontinued. There were also other self-hosted StatusNet instances. The network remained online despite the flagship StatusNet/Laconica instance disconnected from OStatus and moved to PumpIO.

      And out of it came the merged project GNU Social which existing StatusNet instances upgraded to. Then there was also Socialhome software, connected to both OStatus and diaspora*. Of course, Hubzilla too, and way much later, Mastodon®.

      Even without the original, that same network from 2008 remained online, and today is powered by ActivityPub protocol.

      I’m not dismissing the issues you’ve raised. Those are valid and surely, now that the network is 17 years already, they should be addressed. It could be a good write-up for someone and issue a call-to-action to everyone involved to bring the network to the next level. Otherwise, the network will become stagnant, and might die slowly.

      I think, any writer or journalist reading this thread should get inspired by what you shared. It will make their article different and more relevant than simply saying “happy 17th year anniversary”.