As I was perusing Twatter I came across a tweet, which led me to a blog post about Niche Communities and how they used to operate on the web.
I did not really realise things have changed but regardless it gets to the point of describing a bit of how modern web communities can be like, and fair enough social media has become a catch-all, with things like facebook pages cannibalizing themselves.
How Does a Modern Web Community Look?
There’s a reason why so many people abandoned the idea of web-based communities. Social media was easier. It did much of the dirty work for us. All we had to do was show up and start making connections.
.... https://speckyboy.com/niche-web-communities/
The real interesting part for me though was the tech recommendation for having these new modern communities.
I did jump the gun and describe Hive to them in the original tweet just because I am after all a needy attention seeker.
Regardless, I checked out the specific protocol they mentioned - Activity Pub - and I am not sure why I have not heard of it before because it is a full decentralized protocol spec from the W3C.
Simply put the W3C develops and or standardizes protocols that are more often than not implemented by browsers.
So it is good to take note if they have developed a protocol which effectively is for distributed - sharded - content discovery. You know since Hive is a content platform.
As a off-the-cuff comparison I would say Hive is a Centralized content store where as the Active Pub protocol is more like IPFS and a user controlled opt-in or out store.
So those that partake in the network choose how and who is allowed to get their content, and they can revoke the content access at anytime - I think this is what GAIA on Blockstacks does also.
Now that I think of it. it is basically a RSS feed on steroids. Although I personally have never had any use for RSS.
https://activitypub.rocks/
W3 Spec
In the article they also mention Mastadon, and I don't know much about Mastadon because I really do not care about being deplatoformed on normal sites. Now if they paid me then sure I might be a bit irritated.
Anyway, Mastadon has support for this protocol, although Mastadon itself I think is a different beast all together.
Having skimmed the Mastadon docs though it is also more of a sharded system. I know my terminology may not be correct in the least but it is how I describe it to myself from the content I have skimmed.
What I mean by sharded is simply the content is not in one place or in one dataset. With Hive the content is on one chain. The main chain. With these protocols the intent is to verify content that is not on one chain but link up many many small pieces to make a whole.
Like the Polkadot fad for crypto chads.
Since I assume neither the Activity Pub or Mastadon systems reward users they can get away with this, and it is not as easy to say ok but why does Hive not do it like that because simply put Hive can't be handing out tokens to any Tom, Dick and Harry who it might then be subscribed to in such a system.
The best way to think of this protocol for me so far - I will change as I lazily peruse and learn more - but the best way is to compare it not to Hive but to second layer.
It is the second layer or "communities" job to reward.
Anyhow I don't want to get into theoretical uses and what Hive did this or that. Hive likes how it runs, and for the most part does good for those who are active, even if the layer 1 reward system is removed it was nice to not have to be in some malarky driven echo camber just to get a few cents.
If anything though I think a protocol like Activity Pub is something that should be considered for integration to the content and ownership of content aspect of Hive.
We are so far removed from how the web truly operates for content creators that we have slipped into our own little Blogger or Wordpress.com underground.