This is so dramatic it's hard to recover the original complaint.

Dansup has built a photo-sharing app on top of ActivityPub, and we humans are a lost cause because the app doesn't also do text-only messages?

Is that the gist of it?

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karel-3d 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The app is not showing posts that don't contain a picture, but shows posts that do. So if you browse someone Mastodon account on Pixelfed, you will see just fraction of their posts.

https://ploum.net/2025-12-04-pixelfed-against-fediverse.html

I don't think it's important at all because nobody really uses Mastodon anyway; but it shows that doing decentralised software is hard, because each actor can just do whatever they want.

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hshdhdhj4444 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not really.

The gist of it is if Google decides to build GMail but Gmail silently deleted emails that it did not find entertaining enough so you didn’t even know they were ever sent to you.

The article is saying some people see ActivityPub as a communication protocol like Gmail where you expect all messages to be delivered, while others see it as an entertainment protocol where the goal is to entertain the user.

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amiga386 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's more like Usenet users complaining that NZB downloaders don't let their users read text posts. Nobody using an NZB downloader gives a fuck about text posts. They're not there to chat with their fellow humans, they're there to download files. Both the text posts and binary files are transmitted by the same substrate, NNTP, but the protocol clearly has multiple groups of people using it for very different purposes.

Comparing it to email is inappropriate, because email is addressed to you, and you get upset if email servers/clients drop emails. But newsfeeds are not addressed to you. Neither is RSS/Atom. ActivityPub, generally speaking, isn't either. How you choose to experience messages coming your way is up to you. This whole article is making the assumption that if you want something more different, e.g. Pixelfed, PeerTube, Lemmy (Fediverse Instagram/YouTube/Reddit), it basically must also be Mastodon/Pleroma (Fediverse Twitter). Why must it?

	▲	andai an hour ago \| parent [-]
		In the article the author mentioned that it's possible to message him over several protocols, but that only one of them will actually deliver the message?

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mrkeen 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What is the image sharing platform's criteria for "entertaining enough"? Is it whether or not the message is an image?

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stavros 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes but the author lumps all decentralized and/or social networks together when all he really means to talk about is ActivityPub specifically.

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cortesoft 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, Gmail by default does silently hide spam from your inbox.

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xpe 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> This is so dramatic it's hard to recover the original complaint.

I'm curious if this message is new to many here?

What makes it feel "dramatic"? I get the impression people say something is "dramatic" when it doesn't really land or connect? Because when something punches me in the gut, I don't say "that was dramatic", I say "that was compelling".

I'm over 40, and these kinds of concerns (technology serving people's deeper needs rather than serving them up fleeting entertainment) has been on my radar for 15+ years. Back then, I was expecting to go into public administration, policy analysis, or "technology for good" to use what might be a naive phrase.

	▲	D-Machine 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The more typical / appropriate word here would be "over-dramatic" or "melodramatic", not "dramatic".