Threw together a comparison of the four decentralized social protocols I know best: IndieWeb, ActivityPub, ATProto, Nostr. Obviously oversimplified, hopefully still useful! Preview below, click through for full table with links.
I tried to focus on how these protocols are currently deployed and used in the real world. For example, identity in ActivityPub is technically URL-based, but in practice the fediverse uses WebFinger user@domain identifiers more or less universally, so the table reflects that.
Feedback is welcome!
@snarfed.org I was not aware of AT headed towards IETF, is there a source for that?
Hi @snarfed.org I just wanted to let you know that we have a huge matrix community gathering projects about making internet decentralized again. We have official chatrooms from overlay networks to activity-pub, ipfs, nostr, bluesky etc.https://matrix.to/#/#next-internet:codelutin.comMore precisely, this space is dedicated to social networks (including solid, secure scuttlebutt…) https://matrix.to/#/#decentralised-social-networks:codelutin.com
@snarfed.org a ‘push vs pull’ explainer in layman’s terms as it pertains to these protocols would be very interesting.
How is the indieweb peer to peer? I thought I was dependent on servers like Bridgy. Of course the indiweb is not Bridgy, it’s a set of ideas. Maybe there’s a P2P version but then I missed it. Nice comparison.
Thanks! IndieWeb’s p2p is webmentions (webmention.net) directly between personal web sites. Tools like webmention.io (hosted webmention server) and brid.gy are entirely optional.
Tantek Çelik