Does a newsfeed in a protocol (like ActivityPub) makes sense?

[davehakkens]

Hi

One of the things on the near roadmap is integrating a newsfeed, its a pretty basic module that allows admins to keeps their community up to date with a post and users to comment. Potentially a feed can be extended to give all 'space profiles' their own newsfeed to post and follow.

The goal of One Army is to run multiple communities, all having their own feeds. What about building the feed on a protocol, like Activitypub (mastadon) AT Protocol (bluesky) or Nostr. Anyone has experience with this?

Pro/Con

• It allows reach beyond and discovery the One Army instances
• Makes it easier to follow feeds of other communities
• Build on Open Source protocols and decentralised ethos

• No idea how much technical complexity it adds
• Can limit features we need in the future

Questions I have:

• Where is the data hosted?
• What data-fields need to be intergrated?
• Do people use those alternative platforms, is it worth it?
• Can we start with a basic newsfeed and integrate it later?

[pizzaisdavid]

"module" --> for those not deep in the terminology, I think this means a tab in the user interface -- similar to Map, Academy, Questions, etc.

Does a newsfeed in a protocol (like ActivityPub) makes sense?

If it is a business requirement that the newsfeed should be able to be imported to a third-party program, then it does make sense to use some common protocol.

If it is not a requirement, I would assume there isn't a good reason for the extra complexity.

---

If yes to the above, to determine which protocol to pick, I would ask from a business / product design perspective, which third-party programs should the newsfeed be able to show up on?

[mariojsnunes]

The AT Protocol would enable the user to host it's own data. Our platform (or others) would then have to be able to read that data from the user server. It is useful for privacy-oriented social-media like bluesky (and only a small % of users host their own data).
I don't see how it can be useful for us...

[davehakkens]

From my understanding people would be able to see these content-feeds in other apps they are already using.
So they can see our content without having to leave their current app. Making it potentially easier to reach new audiences

[pizzaisdavid]

I am not sure how popular it is now-a-days but for example RSS feeds. And then a person has an app where the subscribe to many RSS feeds and has them all in one place.

I can't speak to if the other protocols integrate with any apps. Do you have any apps in mind, as that may make it easier to look for technical solution.

While not a protocol, there might be tools that allow posting to multiple social medias from a central place for example.

Edit: I guess the apps mentioned are Bluesky, mastadon, and Nostr. I've only heard of Bluesky.

So the ideal, from my understanding is, you post on ProjectKamp update feed and that also gets posted to the ProjectKamp Bluesky account.

And I guess also potentially that any user can do that on the community platform, right?

[pizzaisdavid]

https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/atproto

Edit: the guide is listed under advanced, so maybe that at least gives a hint.

My proposal would be:
implement a basic newsfeed module, maybe with deep linking, if needed. When an official account posts to the community platform, they also manually make a post on other social media, linking to it or copying the text, idk what the plan is. If those posts get engagement, only then look at protocols/ways to automate.

Building something automated to test if an idea has potential, I would try to avoid. But maybe you already have some informal data (like gut feeling based on observations) on if it is worth it.

There are things like Zapier which can automate posting to multiple social medias (I think.)

[davehakkens]

Indeed similar to RSS feed. But if i get it correctly a key difference with RSS feed is that these protocols are made to engage with.
More like a social media with comment/like/reshare etc.

So the ideal, from my understanding is, you post on ProjectKamp update feed and that also gets posted to the ProjectKamp Bluesky account.

Indeed. But as mentioned above it goes beyond only reposting content (which indeed can happen with a zapier) as it keeps all engagement made with the content. And perhaps other instances like a general sustainability server will repost it.

But as we are discussing this I realise it might be a bit to far ahead with technology that isnt very well adopted yet.
So seems indeed logical to start with a classic feed for now.

[davehakkens]

Ghost (blogging platform)
Is currently integrating activity pub. To make it work with bluesky and threads. I think they recently linked it to wordpress that also integrated it.

They have a funny blog/newsletter to follow the progress: https://activitypub.ghost.org/archive/